


The Abolitionist (Master and Servant #1)

by Dusk Peterson (duskpeterson)



Series: Waterman [1]
Category: Original Work, Slave Breakers - maculategiraffe
Genre: 1910s, Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - 1910s, Alternate Universe - 20th Century, Alternate Universe - Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - America, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Bisexual Male Character(s), Bisexuality, Boats and Ships, Butlers, Crime, Crossover, Don't Have to Know Canon, Ethical Issues, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gay Male Character, Gen, Het, Historical slash, Kitchens, Litfic, M/M, Maids, Male Friendship, Marriage, Master & Servant, Master/Servant, Master/Slave, Multi, Original Fiction, Original Het, Original Slash, Rape Recovery, Rare Fandoms, Rebels, Recovery, Self-Discipline, Slash, Soldiers, Spies, Students, abuse issues, abuse recovery, cooks - Freeform, criminals, don't need to read other stories in the series, fishermen, footmen, gen - Freeform, liege lords, liegemen, master & slave, mistress/servant, original gen, servantfic, slavefic, spirituality, valets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-11-26 11:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 62,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20929301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskpeterson/pseuds/Dusk%20Peterson
Summary: When a foul-mouthed, seditious foreigner turns up at your door, what are the benefits of letting him in?So wonders Carr, a young man living in a bayside nation that is troubled by internal battles. In his world, servants fight against masters, tonging watermen fight against dredging watermen, and landsteads eye one another's oyster grounds with greed. It seems to Carr that the only way in which to keep such warfare from entering his own home is to keep very, very quiet about certain aspects of himself which his family would not be able to accept.But "trouble" is a word that appears to delight the new visitor. He is ready to stir up danger . . . though he may not be as prepared as he thinks to confront what lies within Carr.(Note: This is set in my Toughs universe, and nearly all the characters are my own. However, one ofMaculategiraffe's characters has taken a stroll into that universe, with kind permission from Maculategiraffe.)Boilerplate warning for all my stories + my rating system.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maculategiraffe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maculategiraffe/gifts).

> _**Author's note:** This is the first story in _Master and Servant_, the first volume in the Waterman series. You don't need to read the other stories in the series to understand this one. _
> 
> _However, in case you're confused by the apparent contradiction between my tags and the story's dating system: This is a 1910s culture in a world based on the future as it was envisioned in the 1960s. Got that straight? All will be explained in the story._

_1962 Clover, Spring Transformation week._  


> "The hitherto seemingly exhaustless beds of the [Bay will]  
be depleted, if the present rate of dredging is continued. . . . Sooner  
or later [destruction] is coming, unless there is a radical change in some  
of the present phases of the business. . . . [Dredging is] carried on in  
700 boats, manned by 5,600 daring and unscrupulous men, who regard neither  
the laws of God nor man."
> 
> —R. H. Edmonds, as quoted in Ernest Ingersoll's _The Oyster Industry_ (1881).

  
**CHAPTER ONE**

"Any valuables to declare?" 

Carr spoke automatically, reaching for the foreigner's passage-of-port, which gleamed gold with the seal of the Queendom of Yclau. Carr's mind was not on his work today; it was on the fact that he'd spent half the night dreaming of his father's valet, and the other half of the night trying to forget the dream. 

"Yeah," said the foreigner, "but unless you're going to do a body search on me, you're not likely to get a chance to yank it." 

Carr's gaze jerked up from the passage-of-port, which was signed, not by a minor government clerk in Yclau, but by an official from the Queen's palace. The foreigner was smirking at him. 

Carr looked down at the passage-of-port again to give himself time to think. First name, last name – no title initial, of course, but the foreigner's class was clear enough. Not just from the palace official's signature, and not just from the fact that the foreigner was in a second-class cabin rather than steerage. His class was clear from his behavior. Yclau's commoners, on the rare occasions when they visited the Dozen Landsteads, were either deferential or belligerent toward the border guards. They didn't smirk. 

Carr flipped through the rest of the passage-of-port, but aside from an illegible departure stamp, it was blank, showing no indication that the foreigner had left his queendom before. Carr glanced up at the man again. Young, perhaps a sun-cycle or two older than Carr. Dressed in a nondescript travelling cloak that hid his clothes. As light-skinned as Carr himself, but with dark hair and hazel eyes, like a Vovimian. Perhaps the young man was from northwestern Yclau, near the border to the Kingdom of Vovim? Carr couldn't quite place his accent. 

"Do you have any items you wish to declare, comrade?" As always, the final word emerged awkwardly, even though it generally had no effect on foreigners passing over the border. Some foreigners would assume that his mode of address was a quaint custom in the Dozen Landsteads. The ones who knew better tended to be amused rather than angry. 

Amusement seemed to be the young man's response; he was smirking again. "'Comrade'? Are you a member of the Commoners' Guild, then? I didn't know that the labor unions had made such inroads into the Dozen Landsteads." 

"I'll need to see a second piece of identification, sir." He kept his voice empty of emotion as he held out his hand. For all he knew, this youth with the lordly manners and the signature of a palace official on his passage-of-port was a titled heir. Yclau liked to claim that it was the perfect egalitarian state, where all class divisions had been abolished. Judging from the behavior of the elite men whom Carr had met at the border since he reached journeyman age, Yclau still had a long way to go before reaching its ideal. 

The young man, laughing, tossed Carr his identification. Carr caught the plastic card neatly in one hand and examined it carefully. First name, last name, and one of those eerie holopics that the Yclau government used. The young man peered out of his holopic, solemn-faced. 

Everything looked in order. Carr was about to say so; it was hardly worth pressing an aristocrat as to whether he had any valuables to declare, since everything this young man owned was likely to be of value. At that moment, though, the foreigner asked abruptly, "What is your name?" 

He kept his gaze focussed on the identification. "M Carruthers, sir." 

"What's the 'M' stand for?" 

It was a question he had received from innocent visitors before, but something about the tone of this young man's voice was disingenuous. Carr flicked up his gaze and said steadily, "It's my first name." 

The foreigner laughed again and grabbed Carr's hand, the one that was holding the identification. Before Carr had time to pull back, the foreigner had jerked up Carr's sleeve to reveal the M tattooed on the back of his wrist. 

Carr jerked back, his heart pounding, as though the young man had unexpectedly pulled open the flap of his trousers. The foreigner, blast him, was laughing again. 

"Your first name?" the man said in a mocking tone. 

"I'd like to see your bag, sir." 

The man's laughter stopped abruptly. His face turned suddenly as solemn as his holopic. For a moment, he was motionless; then he reached down to the floor. 

Carr caught a glimpse of his bare right arm as he heaved the travelling bag onto the bed; his biceps bulged as he did so. Any delusion Carr might have harbored that he was dealing with an Abolitionist who had come home under disguise to help other runaways was destroyed by that brief glimpse. No tattoo. Even if the tattoo had been removed – Yclau had surgeons who would do that, for a high fee – the mark of it would still be faintly present, for anyone who had eye enough to look for it. 

Not a former citizen of the Dozen Landsteads, then, and anyway, his accent was wrong for that. Watching the foreigner open the bag, Carr wished that he hadn't allowed himself to be goaded by the laughter into inspecting the bag. By the rules of his job, he was supposed to inspect the bags and trunks of anyone who passed over the border. In reality – as his supervisor had made clear on his first day of work – the border guards of the Dozen Landsteads only inspected the bags and trunks of anyone who bore an S or was the foreign equivalent of an S. The border guards – the vast majority of whom wore the letter S on their wrists – couldn't afford to antagonize high-class foreigners. And Carr couldn't afford to antagonize his parents by getting himself into a row that they would have to pull strings to extract him from. 

The foreigner, still expressionless, stood back to allow Carr to inspect his bag. It was a surprisingly old-fashioned bag: it opened at the top, had a brass lock, and was made of leather. Carr was used to seeing gleaming metal cases from Yclau citizens, with buttons and lights and alarms that went off when he touched the wrong spot. One trunk he had inspected had begun chattering out what looked like ticker-tape. The 'trunk' had turned out to be a calculating machine that Carr had accidentally turned on. That particular foreigner – an Yclau professor visiting the Second Landstead University – had been eager to explain the workings of his marvellous luggage. By the time Carr managed to extract himself from the conversation in order to inspect the border-crosser in the next cabin – leaving it to his supervisor to break the news that the calculating machine was contraband in the Dozen Landsteads – Carr had learned more than he had ever expected to know about laser colors, logic circuits, vacuum tubes, ferrite cores, semiconductor diodes, and ongoing efforts to make computers think in a ternary fashion, just as humans did. 

The latest visitor looked far less pleased to have his travelling bag inspected; he was frowning now as Carr pawed through his clothing. Carr avoided looking at the man directly as he squinted at the interior of the bag. The ocean steamer's cabin was dim; the visitor had turned off the gas lamps, though the porthole was open, allowing in the afternoon light, the fish-scent of the harbor, and the call of gulls wheeling southeast, toward where the Bay opened its mouth to the ocean. Most of the gulls would go no further than the narrow shipping lane between the Dozen Landsteads' southeastern-most port, here in the Second Landstead, and Yclau's northeastern port. The First Landstead's southeastern border lay between the two, but if any Bay ports existed there, Carr had never heard of them. For all he knew, the residents there all travelled by jet-car. 

Digging down toward the bottom of the bag, Carr wondered whether the visitor came from the First Landstead. Many of the residents there, he knew, held dual citizenships with the First Landstead and Yclau, and they would need a passage-of-port to enter the upper landsteads, due to their peculiar legal position. First Landsteaders usually entered the upper landsteads by way of the Celadon-Brun Memorial Bridge, which linked the First Landstead with the Second Landstead. But perhaps this man had been travelling overseas and had elected to come home by a less orthodox method. 

Tangling with a First Landsteader could shove Carr into even more trouble than tangling with an Yclau aristocrat. Carr hastily withdrew his hands, which had found nothing in the bag other than a few items of clothing, some articles of toiletry, and three books about the Dozen Landsteads, one with a garish picture of Prison City on its cover. He turned to apologize to the visitor. 

The young man was standing against the wall, his hair rustling under the light wind through the porthole, his eyes darker than before as he glared at Carr. He had pulled his cloak back far enough to allow himself to fold his arms. His hands were in fists; his biceps bulged. 

Carr's gaze lingered on those bulging biceps. Then he turned, closed the bag, and picked it up. 

He heard the man's breath whistle in; then the visitor was silent. 

Yes, he had been right. The bag – heavy enough to strain the visitor's arm when he lifted the bag onto the bed – must be holding more than Carr had seen so far. Moving with the sureness of experience now, Carr pushed the bag onto its side and began inspecting the bag's bottom. 

The hidden latch was not hard to find. He flipped it and pulled open the secret compartment, keeping half an eye on the visitor and both his ears on the sound of his supervisor outside, who was politely greeting foreigners and returning Landsteaders as they made their way down the gangplank. If the young man in this room was going to try to make a break over the border, now would be the time. 

But the visitor showed no sign of either fleeing or turning violent. He simply continued to glare as Carr carefully pulled out the contents of the secret compartment: A carnival half-mask. A length of rope. A stack of leaflets. A gun. 

Carr inspected the gun first. It was not a model that he recognized, but its change lever was easy enough to locate; it was in the safe position. He opened the pistol. A dozen chambers, fully loaded. 

The leaflets were printed by letterpress rather than through the electrostatic printing that Carr was accustomed to seeing in Yclau publications. The nature of the leaflets was even easier to discern than that of the gun: each of them bore a title glaring out from the front. The leaflets said: "Seeking freedom? We can help." 

Keeping the gun carefully cradled in his hand, Carr turned to look at the visitor. The young man's expression of hostility had disappeared. He raised his eyebrows at Carr. "Well?" he said in a challenging voice. "Are you going to use that rope on me? Or do you have handcuffs hidden inside that uniform?" 

Carr turned the gun in his hand and carefully offered its handle to the visitor. As the young man's expression changed to puzzlement, Carr said, "Actually, sir, I was going to invite you to supper." 

Then, as the visitor's puzzlement deepened to bewilderment, Carr smiled slightly. "I think my parents would like to meet you." 

o—o—o

The ocean steamer gave a deep whistle of farewell as a group of small boys – too small for service – laughed and chased a taxicab that was putting its way down the street next to the harbor of Solomons Island. The driver of the motorcar, his face dirty with the sooted steam from his engine, thumbed his nose at the boys, but the master sitting behind him, stiff with dignity, took no notice of the boys. The motorcar paused in front of the Bureau, and the cab-driver leapt out to open the 'car door for the master. Back at the far end of the street, closer to the steamboat wharf, another group of boys splashed pump-water on one another as old men – too old for service – whittled and gossiped on a bench. 

"M Carruthers," Carr repeated when the visitor asked. 

The visitor's eyebrows went up. "So your first name really is 'M'?" 

Carr nodded as he stepped out of the way of a nurse with a pram. The nurse, not surprisingly, gave him a puzzled look before lowering her gaze. Carr explained to the visitor as the two of them continued to walk down the dirt road, "There's a law here in the Dozen Landsteads that your title initial has to be part of your official name. My parents hate that law, so they made my first name 'M' in order to get around the law." 

The visitor laughed as they approached the gold-domed bank of the Second Landstead's capital, which had a plaque outside proclaiming that it would remain open until midnight every day in the high holiday season between the Masters' Spring Festival and the final day of Spring Manhood. "I like your parents already. They sound like troublemakers." 

From the tone of the visitor's voice, it was clear that he considered "troublemaker" to be the highest paean. Carr glanced over at him. Although the last days of frost continued to cling to the Second Landstead, the visitor had peeled off his cloak. Underneath was a plain tunic such as Brun himself might have worn in the middle tri-centuries, but in a startling shade of neon yellow, as though the visitor were a perambulating advertisement. 

"And how do you wish to be addressed, sir?" Carr asked. Even though he had already marked the visitor as a master on the young man's official papers, the "sir" came out more as a question than as a mode of address. 

The visitor flashed him a smile. "I'm Jesse. Just Jesse. No title, and nobody uses my last name except people who don't like me. What do people call you – Emmy?" 

Carr winced. "I'm called Carruthers by the other lads in school. My friends call me Carr." 

"Glad to meet you, Carruthers." In the first note of politeness he had shown, Jesse extended his arm. Carr reached out to shake it, but for some reason, Jesse grabbed his hand and shook that instead. 

"So this is the Dozen Landsteads," Jesse said, turning his head to look at an oyster shed next to the harbor, where servant-women were queueing up to buy their family's meals. 

"The Second Landstead," Carr replied. Then, as Jesse raised his eyebrows again, Carr explained, "Each of the landsteads has its own House of Government, its own culture, its own geographical features. All of the landsteads are located next to the Bay, though. Most of our nation's income comes from shipping or fishing or other water-related occupations." 

He felt as pedantic as his old tutor, and from Jesse's grin, Carr suspected that he sounded that way as well. "Is the Bay where your family's income comes from?" Jesse asked. 

Carr shook his head wordlessly. They were passing the Bureau now, with its long line of unemployed – or unemployable – servants. Some of them looked as though they had been standing there for months. Others, presumably possessing the proper letters of recommendation, were being ushered inside with alacrity. 

Jesse pointed his thumb. "What's that? A charity drive?" 

Carr stared at him a moment before he could be sure that Jesse was not joking. Then he said, "The Bureau of Employment. That's where servants go if they want their certificate of employment sold to a new employer." 

"'Sold,' huh?" Jesse twisted his head to look back. "How much money do the servants make from the selling?" 

"Nothing." Carr had to clear his throat. "Aside from the cut that the Bureau receives, the previous employer gets all the money from the transaction." 

"Fucking hell!" Jesse's expletive was unexpected, explosive, and unfortunately loud. A first-ranked mastress, walking hand in hand with her young children, stared at him with a scandalized expression, then lowered her gaze to his wrist, obviously trying to ascertain what mark he wore. Carr carefully tipped his border-guard cap at her so that she could see the mark on his own wrist. Her mouth tightened as she glanced again at Jesse, but she nodded her greeting to Carr and hurried past. 

Jesse had seemingly not noticed any of this; he was awaiting an answer. Carr said feebly, feeling that his uncle should be here to respond to such remarks, "The fee is supposed to give masters incentive to write good recommendations for their former servants." 

"And not make the servants feel like chattel, huh?" Shaking his head, Jesse snorted. "Gods damn it, I thought you Landsteaders claimed to have abolished slavery four centuries ago." 

Carr paused, not so much because it was hard to answer the question – indeed, he could have answered the question by rote from the time he was two – but because he was having a hard time making sense of Jesse's pattern of speech. It wasn't simply that Jesse kept tossing in slang that Carr was unfamiliar with. It was that he mixed expletives from different nations so freely. The Yclau – Carr knew from having met a few low-born Yclau who swore – would use Landsteader profanity such as "fucking," but "damn" and "hell" were Vovimian epithets, and why in the world would someone who was Yclau swear to gods? 

"Are you from the First Landstead?" he asked cautiously. For all he knew, Vovimians might be swarming in that landstead. 

From the dark look Jesse gave him, Carr gathered that the other young man thought he was avoiding the real issue. But Jesse answered readily enough, "Nope. Never been there. Never even been on this continent before." 

"But—" Carr glanced down at Jesse's bag, which Jesse had insisted on carrying himself, and where the passage-of-port was now placed, within the secret compartment. 

Jesse laughed. "Did you think I was Yclau? I'm a colonial." 

"Oh!" Enlightenment dawned, and Carr gave Jesse's garish tunic a more careful look. 

He had never before met one of the citizens of Yclau's many overseas colonies; since those colonies lay so far over the ocean, colonials usually travelled to this continent by rocket, which meant that they landed in Yclau or Vovim. They would not land in the Dozen Landsteads, whose aeroports were only designed for short-travel dirigibles. 

Well, now Carr understood why Jesse spoke such a peculiarly accented form of what the rest of the world persisted in terming "the Yclau language," though the Landsteaders, with greater justice, called it the Landstead tongue. 

"Which colony?" he asked cautiously, trying to remember his world geography. 

"Oh, I'm from Tenarus, originally. Heard of it?" 

"No," Carr replied truthfully. 

"Didn't think you would have. What's that over there?" 

Carr looked at where he was pointing. They had reached the place in the road where they could see the waters of the Patuxent River, which divided the Second Landstead from its western neighbor, the First Landstead. A longboat carrying stacks of cordwood passed an empty shad-galley, whose journeyman master called the time of the strokes to the rowing watermen. The boat-masters of the two vessels exchanged shouts of greeting. 

Beyond the river – or rather, straight down the middle of it – stood the high wall which constituted the border between the First and Second Landsteads. The only break in the wall came where the Celadon-Brun Memorial Bridge travelled through a small gap. From where Carr stood, he could see the formidably large building that housed the Second Landstead's bridge border guards, who were charged with preventing dangers from entering the Second Landstead – and more importantly, with preventing valuables from leaving the Second Landstead. 

"That's the border between the Second Landstead and the First Landstead," Carr replied. 

"Huh." Jesse craned his head to look up toward the top of the cement wall, which was crowned with barbed wire. "You guys sure don't like each other, do you?" 

"The wall is ours." 

He thought he had succeeded in keeping his tone reasonably level, but Jesse turned his head immediately, saying, "Your hatred isn't mutual, then? Have you ever visited enemy territory?" He waved his hand toward the wall. 

Carr frowned. "We're not at war with the First Landstead. We simply restrict travel and imports from the neighboring nations – all of them, not just the First Landstead – in order to preserve our culture." 

Jesse pondered this for a minute. "Okay, I don't get the 'neighboring nations' bit – we're talking about another landstead, right? – but I get that you guys are isolationists. So you haven't visited the First Landstead?" 

"No," replied Carr, frowning with puzzlement now. "I could do so with permission of my liege-master, but I've never seen the need." 

Jesse raised his eyebrows. "How fucking feudal of you. Is that why you don't get along with the First Landstead? Because you guys are so old-fashioned that you have steam-cars and liegemen?" 

Now it was Carr's turn to raise his eyebrows. "The First Landstead still adheres to the master/liegeman/servant system of social order. I would have thought even a colonial would know that." 

"Why should I?" asked Jesse cheerfully. "It's part of the Dozen Landsteads." 

Carr halted. They were standing now on the road that led to the short bridge to the mainland, where the masters' district of the Second Landstead's capital was located. There stood the Second Landstead's House of Government, which was still located, after many tri-centuries, on the southeastern tip of the Second Landstead. Its location, far from most of the other Houses of Government within the Dozen Landsteads, served to keep the Second Landstead from quarrelling often with anyone except its closest neighbor, the Third Landstead. 

Carr said slowly, "The First Landstead broke away from the remainder of the Dozen Landsteads over seven tri-centuries ago. It became the original territory of what developed into the Queendom of Yclau. It didn't declare its independence from that nation until half a tri-decade ago, and none of the upper landsteads have permitted it to rejoin the Alliance of the Dozen Landsteads." He narrowed his eyes as he tried to read Jesse's expression. "Didn't you know any of this?" 

"I must have fallen asleep during history class at school," Jesse replied cheerfully. "Say, listen, is your house within walking distance?" 

Carr gave him a long look before saying, "Not for two masters." 

For some reason this statement, unlike Carr's comment about Jesse's ignorance, caused the young man to flush. Mentally classifying Jesse in the category of "Privileged foreigner who doesn't like to be reminded he is privileged," Carr turned toward the harbor. 

As usual, Solomons Island Harbor was clustered with dozens of workboats that carried men unloading shipments or seeking repairs. No doubt any of the watermen there would have been willing to take Carr home. On any other day, he would simply have walked up to a random boat, introduced himself, and allowed himself to be chauffeured to his House. 

He was suddenly conscious, though, of what the young man next to him would think if he took up the time of working watermen. He hesitated, uncertain what to do; then, to his relief, he saw the solution. 

He hailed the open-hooded cab that was now headed away from the Bureau of Employment, but which screeched to a halt the moment that the driver saw his green tattoo. Carr held the door open to let Jesse scramble up into the cab; then he waved back the driver, who had been about to get out to hold the door open for Carr. "House of His Master's Kindness," he said as he climbed into the velvet-upholstered seat next to Jesse. 

"Right you are, master." The driver leaned over to plug the appropriate numbers into the taximeter. "Will you be placing this ride on your House's account?" Not surprisingly, he made the suggestion in an unenthusiastic manner; the mansion of Carr's House lay five miles into the countryside, and some of the first-ranked masters and mastresses had a habit of bilking payment to cab-servants, since they could easily hire a different driver's cab the next time they needed one. 

Carr pulled out his wallet and extracted the appropriate amount, then added a generous tip. The driver took the bills with a smile and a salute. "Thanks, master. Can I get you and your companion something to drink?" As he spoke, he reached over to the passenger side of the front seat and pulled out the serving tray holding wine bottles. 

"Nothing for me, thank you. Jesse?" He turned his attention to the other young man, who, he found, was opening his own wallet. "I'm paying for the ride," Carr told him hastily. "I'd be going this way in any case." 

"Damn right you're paying for the ride; I don't have that type of money. —Here." He offered the driver a bill. "Have a drink on me." 

The driver gave a surprised look at Jesse, glanced at his blank wrist, and cast a wary look at Carr. Carr nodded. 

"Thank you, sir, master." The driver nodded at Jesse and Carr respectively before pushing the drinks tray back into hiding. "I'll have my drink after I've finished work. Don't want to get into trouble with my master – much less be stopped by a policeman and have my certificate of employment taken away." He pushed on the pedal, and the engine spit out steam. 

In an open-hooded cab, with the engine hissing and the wind whistling, it was impossible to talk, but Jesse seemed disinclined to converse in any case, keeping his attention focussed on the street, where little servant girls and boys played at the waterside. Carr wrapped his scarf across the lower half of his face in order to protect himself from the steam and the breeze; the driver, cheerful from the two tips he had received, must be racing along at almost thirty miles an hour. The greasy smell of the steam blent with the smoke from the chimneys of nearby businesses, until Carr felt as though his parents had decided he should be trained as a chimney sweep. 

Once the cab travelled beyond the narrow confines of the servants' district on Solomons Island, the air cleared of the smell of fish and waste. They were travelling now through the masters' district of the Second Landstead's capital: Avondale, which lay on the mainland. Elegant nineteenth-tri-century buildings with sweeping lawns were dotted at intervals with the sweet-scented flowers of Spring Transformation week: crocuses and snowdrops. The cab passed the tower that was all which was left of the High Master's twelfth-tri-century castle. The tower, much renovated, still remained the heart of the House of Government. 

Then the cab reached the countryside and began the circuitous route toward Carr's home. 

The trip took twice as long by 'car as it would have by boat; the roads twisted and turned as they followed the many creeks that spread through the Second Landstead, like cracks in ageing furniture. The roads travelled through the farmland, so that the cab driver had to stop periodically to open and close farm gates. After the first couple of times, Jesse hopped down to open the gates, much to the bemusement of the cab driver. He was even more bemused when Carr silently lent his shoulder while Jesse was trying to push the back of the cab across a muddy part of the road. 

The countryside was fresh with the smell of earth, except where that smell was overwhelmed by the soot from passing motorcars. The second- and third-ranked masters usually drove their own 'cars for their families; the first-ranked masters and mastresses had chauffeurs. Occasionally, someone would recognize Carr from his visits to his uncle's House and would bow their head in greeting. 

Finally, after much zigging and zagging, the cab reached a point where the farmland grew smaller, and the woods grew larger. The cab was climbing hills now; the steepness began to grow strong as the trees closed in, bringing with them the smell of damp leaves from the previous autumn. And then came the smell – the unmistakable smell – of marshland. 

They stopped short of being able to see the marsh; the cab turned around in a small circular driveway in front of a hill with grass and hedges, topped by a mansion, red brick with white trim. 

The front lawn of Carr's mansion was nearly empty, Carr saw as the cab slowed to a stop. Aside from a few older servants trimming hedges, nobody was there but a slight-bodied girl almost two sun-circuits younger than himself, who was walking down the tree-lined driveway from the mansion, her arms cradling a basket. When she saw Carr, she smiled and curtsied; then, belatedly remembering her training, she looked nervous. 

Carr's parents were nowhere around, so he didn't reprimand her. "Where are you going, Sally?" he asked as he climbed out of the cab. 

"To the market, master. Comrade," she corrected herself quickly. "The mastre— That is, your mother decided that she wanted some fennel in the soup tonight." 

"How are you getting there? By boat?" Carr asked. 

Sally shook her head. She had long hair the color of sun-rays, and eyes the color of the ocean, a bluish-green. "No, mas— Comrade. Your mother said not to bother the watermen at their work. I'll walk. It's a nice day." She gave the barest nervous glance at the dark clouds on the horizon. 

Not for the first time, Carr felt like cursing his mother. Sending a girl, only five and a third tri-years old, to walk a ten-mile round trip on a day when a thunderstorm was likely, just for a bit of fennel . . . But there was no point in overruling his mother's orders; the servants found it hard enough to figure out what the House Master and Mastress wanted, without having their son give the servants contradictory orders. 

So Carr simply took out his wallet again and handed the appropriate amount to the cab driver. "Take this young woman to Solomons Island and back, please." 

"Giving me another gift, master?" The driver, grinning, hopped down to open the door for Sally, helping her up the steps to the passenger's seat in the service half of the cab. She giggled, delighted, and settled herself into the cab with a flounce of her skirt, as though she were a first-ranked lady. 

Jesse waited until he and Carr had both finished coughing from the dust thrown up by the departing cab before he said, "Trying to compete with me?" 

"What?" Carr looked at him blankly. 

Jesse scrutinized his face, then smiled. "My mistake. You're just naturally generous. Noblesse oblige and all that, right? This all belongs to you, then?" He waved his hand toward the House's mansion. 

"No," said Carr quickly. Then, when Jesse raised his eyebrows, Carr hesitated before opting for his parents' set speech on such matters. "It's wasteful for a single family to live in such a large building. My parents rent out much of it to the house-servants, reserving only a few rooms for their own needs." 

"Hmm." Jesse gazed up at the two-storey mansion, flanked on both sides by wings, which sprawled across the lawn. "How very medieval of them. Puts the servants nicely under their thumb, doesn't it? If the servants don't behave themselves, they not only lose their employment – they lose their homes as well." 

Carr was silent, not knowing how to respond to Jesse's accurate assessment of the situation. Jesse gave a small, humorless laugh. "Okay, so maybe I'm not going to be as crazy about your mom and dad as I'd thought. Kid, you've got one hell of a wild set-up here, and I've got the feeling this shit's only going to get weirder when we walk through those big-ass doors up there." 

"Jesse," replied Carr, feeling the irritation build in him, "would you mind speaking the Landstead tongue from now on?" 

Jesse chuckled lightly. "As long as you keep being honest with me about how things work here. Last thing I need is to walk into enemy territory without someone guarding my back. Coming?" And he took his first step onto the path to the mansion, looking over his shoulder, as though he were the host and Carr was the guest. 

o—o—o

They hiked up the oyster-shelled path silently, Jesse looking back and forth at the lawn and hedges as though he were a hunted animal expecting an ambush. They passed the pussy willows swaying in the spring breeze and the topiary manicured to the exacting standards of Carr's mother. As they approached the two-storey-high doors of the main entrance, Jesse said, "Okay, I'll bite." 

Carr turned his head to look at him. "What do you mean?" 

"Where the hell are you hiding your servants? Are they all asleep?" 

Carr shook his head. "The house-servants are inside. Most of the outside servants are in the back." 

"Come on, then." Without breaking stride, Jesse turned and began heading toward the left-hand side lawn. After a moment's hesitation, Carr followed. 

Even before they reached the side of the house, the fishy smell of the Bay drifted toward them. Jesse's nostrils flared, but he said nothing as they rounded the side of the house and walked past the dependency, heading toward the cliff that lay behind the mansion. 

They reached the terrace that overhung the cliff. Walking over the map carved into the pavement, Jesse made his way up to the railing, nudged aside the telescope there, and leaned his arms on the railing, looking down. 

Carr joined him, his face brushed by the wind off the water. Below, the Bay sloshed back and forth as passing boats sent ripples in the direction of the shore, like friendly greetings. A skipjack, its mainsail and jib proud in the wind, neatly tacked its way round a university boat, whose crew was heaving at the oars as one of the students shouted the timing. The skipjack's bowsprit, as slender and pointed as a heron's bill, passed a runner that was headed for the mansion's wharf, the crews of both boats exchanging shouted greetings. The culling boys of the skipjack waved wildly, their hands filled with the oysters they were sorting. As the runner turned to make its way alongside the wharf, which lay beyond the shallow water next to the beach, Carr saw the baskets of oysters that the runner had transferred from another skipjack dredging the Bay. 

Even as he watched, one of his House's skipjacks, which had been docked for repairs for several days, slipped away from the wharf, the noontime sun gleaming on the chain-linked dredge-net on the boat's side. One waterman was checking the dredge's rope leading to the windlass, while the other watermen followed their ship-master's shouted orders for controlling the sails. There was a moment when it seemed that the skipjack would collide with the runner, which could not have expected to meet an outgoing fishing boat so late in the day, but the watermen of the House of His Master's Kindness were among the best on the Bay. As the skipjack neatly tacked its way past the runner, a waterman jumped off the runner and hurried to secure the anchoring rope, while on the boat itself, the remaining watermen, in rubber boots and smocks, began to prepare the oyster baskets for unloading. 

"I thought you said your family's income didn't come from fishing?" Jesse commented, raising his voice above the wind. He was staring down at the servants who had come racing out of the packing house at the beach end of the wharf. They met their fellow servants – the watermen unloading the oysters – and formed a delivery line, transferring the baskets from hand to hand to the packing house with an efficiency such as a steam-car manufactory might have envied. 

"It doesn't," replied Carr. "Well, only a small part of it, anyway." 

Jesse raised his eyebrows as he turned his head to look at the packing house. The building had floor-to-ceiling windows; Carr could see clearly the hundreds of women there, each servant standing in her own little stall, using knives to pry open the oysters. "This is what you call a small-scale operation?" Jesse said. "Gods, what kind of business do you run to bring in the _big_ money?" 

Carr was still searching for an appropriate answer when he caught sight of a figure struggling up the railed staircase from the beach. Gratefully, he hurried forward. 

By the time Carr reached him, Rowlett was panting to catch his breath, pushing off his forehead the white locks that had become plastered there with sweat. His eyes lit up when he saw who was approaching him. "Ah, Master Carr." He gave a small bow. "It's right good to see you. Have you started your spring holiday, then?" 

"Yes, but I'm working as a border guard during the vacation," Carr replied, helping Rowlett up the final steps. 

Rowlett smiled. "Not a bad idea, for you to work alongside servants. Gives you a good idea of what sort of work you'll be supervising. Perhaps your father could find something for you to do at his office, eh? And who's this?" 

"This is—" He stopped, suddenly uncertain how to perform the introduction, and in which direction. 

Jesse stepped in, offering his arm. "How do you do, sir. I'm Jesse of Tenarus." 

Rowlett looked from the arm to the blank wrist, then to Jesse's face, before settling on giving Carr an uncertain expression. 

"One of the colonials," Carr offered. 

"Ah. Well." Evidently deciding to err on the side of politeness, Rowlett grasped Jesse's arm and shook it. Jesse looked down at their arms, as though not entirely sure what transaction had just taken place. "So," said Rowlett, carefully keeping his eyes raised from Jesse's wrist as he released the arm, "have you had a good trip? Do you get to travel often, in your occupation?" 

"Yes, quite a lot," Jesse replied, unhelpfully. 

"Family business?" Ever persistent, Rowlett tried again. 

Jesse seemed to find this possibility amusing. "No, an organization I work for. I travel quite a bit for them." 

"Tradesman?" Rowlett suggested, with that faintly puzzled air which Landsteaders invariably acquired when dealing with a foreigner from the mid-class. 

"Exports," confirmed Jesse cheerfully. 

"Ah." Rowlett looked over at Carr, tossing the matter back over to him. 

The exchange had given Carr time to think. "I was hoping that Jesse could stay the afternoon," he told Rowlett. "And perhaps have supper with us. If his business isn't pressing . . ." He looked over at Jesse, waiting for him to confirm or deny this possibility. 

"Not at all," said Jesse, still cheerful. "I'm in no rush on my tour." 

"Ah." Having finally ascertained that Jesse was a man of leisure, Rowlett relaxed somewhat. "And he'll be dining with you, you say? Well, sir, I hope you have a pleasant visit to our landstead. —Master Carr, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and supervise the unloading of the craft that just arrived." 

"Yes, of course," said Carr, and then, on impulse, he kissed Rowlett on the cheek, which caused the old man to smile as he turned to make his way down the steps. 

Jesse waited until Rowlett had reached the beach sands before saying, "You know, I could be wrong, but I think the last time I was quizzed that intensely was when I made the mistake of visiting a country where it was considered to be of the utmost importance to determine whether you were turned on by gals or by guys." 

Carr felt the corner of his mouth twitch. "Did you give them the right answer?" 

"Well, I discovered the hard way that 'both' wasn't the right answer. . . . Do _all_ your guests undergo this type of inquisition?" 

"Only the foreigners." Carr turned and leaned his back against the railing, looking over at Jesse. Beyond the other youth, the sky was bright with afternoon light, in between the trunks of the orchard trees. For at least the moment, the threatening thunderclouds had dispersed. "He was trying to determine whether you were a master or a servant." 

"Yeah, I got that. I was having the same problem figuring him out. I mean, he called you 'Carr,' which you said is what your friends call you, and you kissed him, but he also called you 'Master' and bowed to you . . ." 

"Carr is what my family calls me too." Then, as Jesse gave him an impatient look, Carr added, "Rowlett is the supervisor of our watermen. He's been with our family forever – since the days when my Uncle Geoffrey was Head of this House, which was before I was born. So Rowlett calls me Carr, because he's known me since I was a baby." 

"But he's a servant?" 

"No, a master." Seeing Jesse's brow pucker with puzzlement, Carr added, "He's a second-ranked master – he owes allegiance to my parents. There are three ranks of lesser masters in the Dozen Landsteads, and all of them owe allegiance to a master ranked above them . . . except for the first-ranked masters. They only owe allegiance to the High Master." 

"And you're a first-ranked master." 

Carr nodded and held up his right wrist. "A green M. That shows I'm first-ranked. Rowlett wears a blue M, so he's second-ranked. Third-ranked masters – you can see some of them down there, taking orders from Rowlett – wear a red M. Servants wear a black S." 

"No ranks among them?" said Jesse quickly. 

"Masters can shift their servants' ranks as they wish." 

"What about the unranked men and women?" 

Carr silently pointed to Jesse. 

"Me. Other foreigners. No one else?" Jesse spread his hands, as though embracing the whole of the Dozen Landsteads. 

"There's a lad in my school whose rank is still being determined by the courts. Other than cases like that . . . no. Landsteaders are given their rank when they're born." 

"And they can't rise in rank?" 

"Lesser masters can rise in rank. Servants can't rise to the rank of master." Carr pushed himself away from the railing. "Let's go inside. I should introduce you to my parents before supper is laid." 

Jesse gave a low laugh as he turned away from the railing. "Yet another chance for you to struggle with introductions. Will this one be better?" 

Carr shook his head. "A lot worse. You can help by introducing yourself as Comrade Jesse. I'll handle the rest." Ignoring the faintly quizzical look that Jesse gave him, Carr walked toward the back entrance to the mansion.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

The terrace connected with the mansion by way of three vertical windows that began at the floor and ended nine feet higher in fanlights. Carr and Jesse had barely stepped through the middle window – which served as a doorway – when Carr's father appeared, apparently on his way to the terrace. He paused when he saw Jesse and offered Carr an enquiring look. 

"Father," said Carr carefully, "this is Master Jesse of Tenarus. He has just arrived in the Dozen Landsteads for the first time, so I invited him home for supper." 

"I see." Carr's father kept his voice carefully neutral. He was a middle-aged man with well-oiled hair and a perpetual crease of worry on his brow. As always, he was dressed in his lounge suit; he disdained to wear anything fancier. In his hand was his pen; when at home, he was forever buried in paperwork for his businesses and his House. What little time was left over, he mainly spent revising his book. Transferring the pen to his left hand in preparation for extending his right arm, he said, "Welcome to Cliffsdale Mansion, Master Jesse." 

Jesse looked at Carr. "I thought you called this place His Master's Kindness?" 

Out of the corner of his eye, Carr saw his father wince. Carr replied, "That's the name of our House, and it has traditionally been the name of the House's mansion as well. But my father has renamed the mansion." 

"Good," said Jesse firmly. "That other name gave me the creeps." He thrust out his arm at Carr's father. "I'm Comrade Jesse, and I hope you're not about to tell me that my wrist is the wrong color to greet you." 

As might be expected, Carr's father looked at first startled and then delighted. "On the contrary," he replied, shaking Jesse's arm vigorously. "You're entirely welcome here. —Have you told him?" He looked at his son. 

Carr shook his head. "I figured that you could explain." 

Still smiling, Carr's father released Jesse's arm as he said, "You will find yourself at home here, Comrade Jesse. This is an Egalitarian House – the only such House in the Dozen Landsteads. All of us in this household are equals to one another . . . or as equal as we can be in a nation with pernicious laws that forbid three-quarters the population their freedom." 

"Sort of a difficult trick to keep an Egalitarian household in such a nation, I'd imagine," Jesse said cheerfully as he glanced up at the cut-glass chandelier hanging from a gilded plaster ceiling that was molded to look like a beach filled with starfish. 

Carr's father sighed. "Alas, yes. It's impossible to run a mansion of this size without brute labor. My wife and son and I do our best to take our share of the tasks, but practical factors – I run two businesses, and Carr is away at school during much of the year – mean that the servants must bear the brunt of the work. We try, though, to make the servants understand that this is their home as much as ours. We are merely the mansion's caretakers; the servants are the true owners of this place." 

"Yeah?" Jesse had a broad smile on his face that, if Carr had not known better, he would have taken to be genuine. "Sounds like a fun place to live. Lots of servants' parties here, right?" 

"Ah . . . no." Carr's father seemed disconcerted. "We live a quiet life here. —That's the telephone," he added, turning in the direction of the ringing. "You'll excuse me, I hope. I answer my own 'phone, rather than have servants do that task." He hurried from the room, in the direction of the mansion's front door; presently, he could be heard saying, "No, no, Variel, I'll answer it myself." 

"So no servants' parties?" Jesse's smile had dropped off like a mask. 

"No parties for masters and mastresses either," replied Carr quietly. "We don't receive many visitors here." 

"Sort of a waste of space, then." Jesse pointed his thumb. There was no furniture in the room, other than chairs lining the walls. Upon the walls, arched panels depicted scenes from Remigeus's life. The final panel, near the door through which Carr's father had departed, depicted Remigeus's death, in gruesome detail. Carr's father, complaining about the flaking of the oil-paint, planned to paint the room a pleasant shade of green, to match the name of the mansion's main building, Rebirth. 

Carr was saved having to answer by the entrance of a man his father's age, also dressed in a lounge suit. The mansion's occasional visitors often mistook him for a master, a source of constant embarrassment for the visitors and, presumably, for the man, though he did not voice his thoughts on such matters. The choice of uniform was not his own. 

"Variel," said Carr, "this is Comrade Jesse, who will be staying to supper. Will you take his bag up to my room, please?" He quickly snatched the bag out of Jesse's hands before Jesse should insist on carrying up the bag himself. 

Variel gave the slightest flicker of a glance in the direction of the library. Carr could guess that he was wondering whether the master of the House was still occupied on the phone. Evidently deciding to take the safest course, Variel replied, "Certainly, comrade. Would you like me to inform your mother of the arrival of your guest? She is currently in the summer kitchen, making supper." 

Carr just managed to suppress a groan. "Yes, Variel; thank you. —Would you like a tour of the mansion before supper?" he asked Jesse as Variel departed with the bag. 

Jesse shrugged. "Sure. Who's the guy in the suit? One of the masters here?" 

"Ah, no . . ." Carr was caught as off-guard as his father had been. Then he saw Jesse's grin and added more firmly, "No. As my father said, the servants do the brunt of the work here. The only masters living in the mansion are me and my father." 

"And your mother's in the kitchen, right?" Jesse joined Carr as he walked toward the door to the rest of the mansion. "Where'd she learn to cook, if she was raised a mistress? I mean, mastress." 

Carr just managed to keep from making the frank reply, "She didn't." Instead he said, "The servants offer her advice sometimes. —The kitchen is down that way." Carr pointed to the right. They had reached the foyer, with its ceiling that was the height of three men. "The formal dining room is next to the salon, which we just walked through. Then comes the family dining room – that's in the hyphen." 

"The hyphen?" Jesse shaded his eyes, as though he were a sailor peering toward a distant landscape. 

"The passageway," Carr explained. "It's nicknamed the hyphen because it looks like a numeral. —Hyphen, cross, circle," he explained as Jesse looked at him blankly. "Those are the three numerals in the Dozen Landsteads. We follow the ternary system here." 

"Oh, right, I read about that." Jesse dismissed the matter with a gesture that suggested he considered the Dozen Landsteads' ternary system to be unimportant. Many foreigners made that mistake. "And the kitchen is beyond that?" 

"Yes, in a separate building, but in the cold months of the year, the servants will use the winter kitchen in the north wing – the Death Wing we call it." 

Jesse raised his eyebrows. "Cheery name." 

"The south wing is the Transformation Wing," Carr explained patiently. "We're standing in Rebirth." 

Jesse continued to look blank. 

Sighing, Carr said, "Chapter Two in _A Concise History of the Dozen Landsteads_. The book was in your bag." 

"Oh, religious stuff. Right." Jesse dismissed this with another gesture. "So the Death Wing is the territory for food, you're saying?" 

"On this level. Mind you," said Carr as he turned in the direction of the Transformation Wing, "all of the main floor will be renovated some day soon. My father plans to turn most of the rooms into apartments for the servants." 

"What's down in the south wing?" was Jesse's only reply as they made their way into the hyphen that led to the Transformation Wing. 

"The chapel. We just passed the sitting room, and my father's library is here." 

Carr pointed to the small room off the corridor in the south hyphen; the door was closed, but he could hear his father's voice saying, "No. Under no circumstances. This is the third time in a sun-circuit that he has changed masters; he is obviously flitting from job to job in an idle manner. Take his certificate from him—" 

"These lead up to the second level." Carr pointed at the flight of stairs, hoping that Jesse was missing the import of the phone conversation. 

"Nice." Jesse ran his finger along the mahogany railing as he peered up at the statue upon the newel post at the bottom of the railing. One of Carr's ancestors, who had built this mansion at the beginning of the nineteenth tri-century, had possessed a taste for foreign art; the statue was of Mercy, a Vovimian goddess. Even Carr's uncle, who had strong opinions against foreign contamination, had not been able to bear the idea of taking down the image of the beautiful, winsome maiden. 

Carr's father was just waiting for the right price before he sold the statue. His motive for the sale was not piety; he simply wanted more money for his slowly growing fund for the servants. 

Carr explained this as they made their way up the broad, curving stairway, past windows with fanlights the shape of clamshells. At the landing, Jesse gave a quick glance around, as though expecting to be jumped the moment he walked into any of the large bedrooms. "Masters' quarters, right?" 

"For the most part," replied Carr, stepping into the hallway. "That room belongs to my parents, and the smaller one next to it is Variel's." 

"What are these?" Jesse walked over to peer into the two tiny rooms over the foyer. One of them had a miniature fireplace. 

"They belong to Sally and Bat," Carr replied. "Sally you've already met; Bat is our new footman. They're both young – Bat just turned journeyman a sun-circuit ago, and Sally is a sun-circuit younger than him. So my father thought it would be best to house them here, where Variel could keep a close eye on them." 

"Huh." Jesse took another look at the tiny bedroom with the fireplace, into which nothing more than a bed and a washstand could be crammed. "Bat gets the fireplace, I see. It's a man's world here, right?" He laughed at Carr's blank look. "Okay, what's at the end of the corridor here?" 

"My study. It used to be the nursery, when I was growing up. And here's my bedroom." He pointed to the room in the northeast corner. The door was ajar; Jesse's bag sat on the dresser. 

"Nice view," commented Jesse as he entered the room and hung his head out the open window in order to stare at the Bay. "So this is where I'll be staying?" He glanced through the doorway near the window, his head brushing against the jackets there. 

Carr said patiently, "Jesse, that's my dressing room." 

"So? It's not much smaller than the rooms you gave to Sally and Bat. Or did you expect me to sleep in the servants' quarters?" 

Carr hesitated. He had not expected Jesse to sleep anywhere; he had merely intended to invite him to supper. But Jesse – who had now disappeared entirely into the jungle of hanging clothes – seemed to be interpreting Carr's invitation more broadly. 

Carr wondered what his father would say if he learned that Jesse had invited himself to stay. Stalling for time, Carr said, "The dressing room connects only with my bedroom. You'd have to walk through here every time you left your room." 

"So? That could have its advantages." 

"What do you mean, it could—?" 

He stopped. He was not usually this slow. Indeed, the joking speculations among his classmates about what service he required of his fags had reached such a pitch that he had inwardly vowed never to serve as a fag-master again. 

But in this case, the first warning he had of the meaning of Jesse's remark came when Jesse appeared at the door of the dressing room, smirking. He was no longer wearing his cloak. 

He was no longer wearing his clothes. 

Carr very carefully stepped over to the door to the corridor. He glanced out, ascertained that none of the servants were in the hallway, and shut the door before saying in a low voice, "Thank you. That's very kind of you to offer. But I'm afraid . . ." He hesitated, wondering how to word his rejection. 

"I'm not your type?" Fortunately, Jesse had rid himself of his smirk. 

This seemed to be the sort of situation where it was kinder to be frank. "No. So put your clothes back on, please. Irene cleans the bedrooms in the afternoons." 

Jesse reached out toward his discarded tunic, in a somewhat automatic manner. Then he paused, and a look of puzzlement came onto his face. 

"What is it?" Carr asked. 

Jesse shook his head slowly. "Nothing. I just hadn't planned to put my clothes back on that quickly." 

"No?" Carr kept his voice steady. "I suppose that you wanted to spare Irene any embarrassment." 

Jesse's only response was a snort as he re-clothed himself. Carr turned his attention toward the window. The wind off the Bay was soft. On the horizon, he could see the thin dark line that represented the Third Landstead. Far-off Hoopers Island was hidden by the cradling right-hand arm of the House's cove, where a lamphouse stood. The left-hand arm of the cove consisted of layered cliffside, topped by trees. 

Carruthers Cliffs Cove was not a very good cove. Though its steep cliffs provided protection against the annual northwest blow, the cove was too shallow to shield the boats against winds coming from most other directions. Whenever a great storm threatened from the south, Rowlett had to move their fleet to the harbor at the capital. 

Carr's father was not to blame for this inconvenience. The man who had chosen this cove for the mansion of the House of His Master's Kindness had not had knowledge of the ways of the water, except in the sense that he had sailed here from further down the Bay – from the southern tip of the First Landstead. 

Seeking his own land and his own power, in the years when all lesser masters were mere servants to the High Master of the First Landstead, that man had founded his House on the island where Jesse's steamship had docked. But on the piece of land where he had originally landed, at what would come to be known as Carruthers Cliffs Cove, Carr's ancestor had arranged for the founding of a second House, for a different but equally important purpose. And so Carr's family reigned over the second oldest House in the Second Landstead, though the ancient mansion had been replaced by later buildings. 

"Whatcha thinking?" Moving forward, Jesse joined him at the window. 

"I was wondering who I was in my past lives," Carr replied, turning his gaze toward a fleet of bugeyes that was sailing toward the horizon. "I must have been ranked as a servant in some of my lives, but I don't remember what that was like. I wish I did." 

"Why?" asked Jesse bluntly. 

Carr shook his head wordlessly, turning away from the window. Death, transformation, rebirth: the endless cycle of time, spiralling upwards. And yet he felt trapped, as though he were lingering in the serene yet poisonous world of afterdeath. 

"Let's go downstairs," he said, opening the door and stepping into the hallway. 

"Hold on. How'd Variel get my bag up here? We didn't meet him on the stairs." 

"There's a second stairway over there, for the servants." Somewhat distractedly, Carr pointed at the narrow stairwell. 

"Cool." Upon that single, mysterious word, Jesse darted down the flight of stairs. 

Carr hesitated before following him. He found that Jesse had paused at the low-ceilinged mezzanine level, at the top of the Death Wing. Jesse was poking his head into the small rooms there. "Servants' quarters, right?" 

"Yes. Our cook, and Millie the scullery girl, and Irene – she's my mother's maid – all live here." 

"The rooms are kind of tiny," Jesse commented. 

Feeling defensive, Carr said, "They were intended as rooms for the masters' children when they were first built. My father realizes that they're really too small for adults to live in – that's why he plans to convert the rooms on the ground level. The servants used to have a bit more room in the cellar, but my father thought—" 

"So let's visit the cellar." And with that, Jesse darted down the stairs again. 

Carr sighed. Keeping up with Jesse, he was beginning to see, was going to be like keeping up with a feral cat that insists on entwining itself round your legs and tripping you every time you take a step. 

Carr caught up with Jesse at the foot of the stairs; the young foreigner had already begun to prowl silently through the cellar, like an alley cat exploring new terrain. They moved together through the connected line of rooms. First came the old, abandoned servants' kitchen, its coal-blackened walls as dark as midnight. Then they passed the sleeping room, stripped of furniture even in the days when all the servants slept here. Last of all, they reached the work area, filled with rough-planed benches, shovels and rakes and other rusting tools, and a coal-chute leading outside so that the coal could be delivered directly to the servants who would take the coal upstairs in buckets. There was no fireplace in the servants' quarters, only the stove used to prepare the masters' meals. 

Carr saw Jesse taking all this in, his gaze travelling over the low, groined arches of the ceiling before settling on a piece of rusting metal on the wall. Jesse went over to inspect it. 

Carr cleared his throat. "My father uses the slave quarters as a wine cellar now." 

Jesse looked over his shoulder at Carr, raising his eyebrows. "'_Slave_ quarters?" 

"The cellar is very old." Carr moved forward so that he could see more clearly what Jesse was standing next to. "Most of this house was built at the beginning of the nineteenth tri-century, but it was built on top of the old foundations, which date back tri-centuries – to the years when the servants hadn't yet been emancipated." He watched as Jesse lightly touched the rusty whipping ring on the wall. "My father felt this wasn't an appropriate place in which to house servants." 

"Yeah." Jesse stepped back from the ring. "Yeah, good call by your dad." He turned abruptly away from the ring. In the dim light from the cellar window, sweat glittered on his face. "Let's get out of here," he added, his voice wrung by some savage emotion. "This place gives me the creeps." 

o—o—o

Perhaps in acknowledgment of the guest's political leanings, Carr's father had chosen to hold supper, not in the formal dining room, but in the family dining room. By the time they arrived there – having taken a tour of the mansion grounds – Sally had returned from town: she was stationed in the corner, breathing heavily as she pulled the rope that stirred the peacock-feathered ceiling fan, which hung over the dining table. Jesse took one look at this and demanded, "Do we really need that?" 

"Hmm?" Carr's father, who was making last-minute adjustments to his manuscript, looked up from the galley proofs, transformation-blue pencil in hand. "No . . . no, I don't suppose so. It's cool enough today that we don't really need the fan. That's enough, my girl." 

Sally let go of the rope, practically collapsing as she did so. Bat, his footman's uniform slightly askew, came forward to support her with his arm. Carr made a note to himself to remind his father that he should really remember to assign the House's heaviest duties to the male servants. His father, who lived under the delusion that the servants would inform him if they didn't like the tasks they were assigned, was inclined to forget such niceties. 

Carr's mother entered the room, all aflutter, her embroidered shirtwaist dress shining cream-colored in the late-afternoon sun. "Oh, dear, I'm sorry I'm late," she exclaimed. "I was helping Cook with the dessert." 

Carr managed not to wince. Carr's father said equably, "I'm so glad you can find the time to assist the servants. I dearly wish I could. Carr, do have a seat." 

Carr sat down, acutely conscious of Bat, who had not rushed forward to help him. When Carr's father had presented Bat as a delayed gift to Carr for his seventeenth birthday, as a potential future valet for his only son, Carr had spent an entire week having disturbing dreams. . . . But the dreams had come to nothing. It soon became clear that, for Bat, service was merely a way to earn money so that he could keep from starving. The young footman was very unlike Variel, Carr's father's valet, who was dedicated to serving his master. 

Carr turned this dangerous thought from his mind as Jesse, rather than wait to be seated in a master's chair, pulled up a servants' stool to the table. Nobody besides Carr noticed; Carr's father's attention was focussed on Sally, who was pulling back a chair for her mastress. 

"Why, thank you!" As always, Carr's mother managed to sound surprised and grateful for the duties she herself had trained the servants to do. It was one of the reasons why, despite everything, the servants loved her. "That's so very kind of you. And so nicely done." 

Turning pink, Sally curtsied. "Thank you, ma'am." 

"Oh, please, no curtsies. And no 'ma'am' either. Benjamin," added Carr's mother, turning her head toward her husband as Sally, crestfallen at this reproach, retreated from the table, "it's really too bad that the servants have no suitable title by which to address me. Can't we create a female equivalent of 'Comrade Carruthers'?" 

"'Comradess,' perhaps?" Ignoring the plate of terrapin meat that Variel was offering him, Carr's father paused to consider the dilemma. 

"Food's at your elbow," Jesse pointed out. "Why do you need a special female title anyway? What's wrong with calling her Comrade Carruthers too? It would show that she's your equal." 

Carr's mother gave Jesse a delighted look. Smiling, Carr's father said, "Daisy, allow me to introduce our guest, Comrade Jesse. Carr has invited him to join us today." 

Carr could feel Jesse's eye on him. "I thought, Father, that we might invite him to stay with us for a few days." Seeing his father's incipient frown, he added, "There are so few Egalitarian homes in the Second Landstead for him to stay at, and it seems a shame for him to have to resort to a hotel." 

His father's expression cleared. The elder Carruthers valued his privacy, but he responded, as Carr had intended, to this clear reminder of his duties as the highest-ranked Egalitarian in the Second Landstead. "Of course," replied Carr's father. "Our home is yours, comrade, for as long as you need. Have you travelled far?" 

"A fair bit. —This food is good." Jesse directed this comment, not at Carr's mother, but at Variel and Bat and Sally, who had retreated to the serving table. 

"We have an excellent cook," said Carr's mother, always happy for an opportunity to compliment the servants. "I wish that I could prepare meals half as well as she can." 

"Nonsense, sweet one; your meals are always a delight to eat." Carr's father frowned as Sally came forward again to retrieve the napkin that Carr's mother had dislodged in her excitement. "My girl, what is that you're wearing?" 

Sally stared down at her dress, bewildered. Carr's mother looked surprised. "Is something wrong with the servants' uniforms?" she asked. 

"Her top button is undone. And her skirt is far too short. She looks like a woman of the streets." Carr's father glared at the young servant, who was now blinking back tears. 

"Oh, dear." Carr's mother grew flustered. "I hadn't noticed. . . . Sally, perhaps it would be best if you made a few adjustments to your uniform." 

"Yes, ma—" Sally quickly cut off the forbidden word. "Now?" 

"Yes, now." As the girl retreated, Carr's mother looked over at her husband, who continued to glare in the direction of the departing servant. "It's not her fault, is it, dear? I mean, she's very young." 

"Yeah, she is, isn't she?" Jesse's voice was lazily speculative. Carr winced, wishing that his guest was less perceptive. 

His father's expression turned to puzzlement. "Excuse me?" 

"Nothing," Jesse replied around a mouthful of hominy. "Look, why is it that you don't have the time to do household tasks alongside the other residents here?" He waved his hand toward Variel and Bat, who continued to stand by the serving table, silent and alert. 

Carr's father sighed. "Because, regrettably, my primary responsibility is to earn the money that keeps this House operating. We lost our tenant farmers during the financial troubles three tri-decades ago, and the Bay doesn't bring in as good a harvest as it used to. If it weren't for my work at the Bureau, this mansion would be in a state of disrepair." 

"The Bureau?" Jesse had gone suddenly as still as the servants. Carr bent his head, concentrating his gaze on the celery salad that he was pushing around the plate with his fork. Not merely perceptive but quick-witted. Jesse was going to prove . . . interesting. 

"The Bureau of Employment. For lack of a better man, I am its director." His father's voice turned brisk. "We are officially a government bureau, but we have semi-independent powers. I do my best, of course, to see that the Bureau is run by principles that do not do violence to Egalitarian ideals. I like to think that I do a better job than my predecessor, who was inclined to pair servants with cruel masters. Even so . . . The fact is, I really have no head for running such a large organization." 

"Nonsense!" As always, Carr's mother was quick to defend her husband. "The trouble lies with the awful laws in this landstead." 

"Laws which I am bound to uphold until such time as I can persuade the High Master to change them . . . or until his heir takes power and begins to revitalize this landstead. —Thank you, Carr," he added as Carr passed him the last of the terrapin. Carr was aware of Variel's gaze upon him; he wondered, as always, whether Variel disliked his occasional tendency to take on the servants' work. 

His mother, who had no qualms whatsoever about interfering with the servants' daily routines, said brightly, "Here it is! The dessert I helped Cook make!" 

Sally, who had made a quick change into her older, more frayed uniform, was carefully wheeling in a cart which held the lopsided creation that Carr's mother had birthed. Carr's father, whose self-discipline never wavered when it came to his wife's food, said, "Marvellous. I hope you made enough for seconds." 

"Looks delicious." Jesse also seemed to have excellent self-discipline; he was beaming at the muddy mixture that Bat had just set before him. 

That left Carr to make up the loyal rear guard. He did so by taking a bite of the— He wasn't quite sure what it was, but he managed to swallow it without gagging. "Just what a fellow needs," he said, reaching hastily for water to wash down the vile remnants in his mouth. "Something solid to eat." 

"Solid?" His mother looked uneasy. "It's meant to be a light flan. Didn't I make it right?" 

"Of course you did, sweet one." Carr's father had already cleared his plate. "It's a shame that mastresses aren't eligible for the baking contests at the Second Landstead's fair. You'd win, hands down." 

Carr's mother looked relieved. Carr stared down at his still-full plate, wishing that he owned a dog, so that he could surreptitiously feed his mother's meals to it. Jesse, who was evidently made of quite stern material, held up his emptied plate. "More, please." 

"Thank you," Carr's father said to Jesse when his wife and Sally had withdrawn to allow the men to speak alone. "I know that my wife's desserts are somewhat unusual. Do you smoke?" He gestured to Variel to bring forward the cigars, pipes, and cigarettes that he reserved for guests. Neither he nor Carr smoked; they eschewed such luxuries, since tobacco remained the primary crop that servants must sweat over in the Second Landstead. 

"Nah, bad for the lungs," said Jesse, showing foreigners' usual penchant to appeal to science when making decisions. "And don't worry about the dessert. It's much better food than I've eaten in the past." 

Carr shot him a glance, wondering what dire circumstances his guest had entered into, that he should have eaten food so poisonous. Relaxing, Carr's father said, "We are privileged, we know, to live first-ranked lives. In a better world, there would be no different ranks for masters – no different ranks for any man. The titles of master and servant would be abolished; we would eat the same food together, sharing in the communal fortunes that bound us in ancient times, before the perfidious doctrine of mastery and slavery arose. . . . But I am lecturing to a fellow school master of Egalitarianism," he added, smiling. "Tell me, what were you hoping to accomplish during your visit to the Second Landstead?" 

"Rest and recreation, mainly." Jesse stretched his arms. "I've been working hard for a while now – needed a chance to vacation. I thought I'd check out the nightlife in the capital, for a start." 

"Solomons Island and Avondale aren't major cultural centers," Carr warned him. 

"Culture? Well, that's nice too, I suppose. I was thinking of entertainment along the lines of something more . . . elemental." 

Carr, who had been trying futilely to wash out the remaining taste of his mother's dessert, choked on the water. His father said, "Um. Ah. Yes. —Variel, you can clear up later. Take Bat with you." He waited until the servants had left and closed the door before he lowered his voice to say, "Well, yes, we have such establishments. I can give you a list if you like. Though we only have women at them, I should warn you." 

"Doesn't matter," said Jesse cheerfully. "Either way works for me." 

"Well, then." Carr's father paused to take the pen and leather-bound notebook that Carr had pulled out of his own jacket. "I haven't visited any such establishment myself, you understand. I can only recommend businesses that others have mentioned to me." 

"With a wife like that, who needs additional entertainment?" As he spoke, Jesse's eye went to Sally, who was passing the window, basket and pruning shear in hand, evidently on her way to fetch flowers for her mastress. "Thanks," he added as Carr's father handed him the short list. "I'll walk down to the capital tonight." 

"It's far too long a journey to walk," responded Carr's father. "I'll have one of my watermen take you there by boat . . . unless you prefer to be chauffeured by motorcar?" 

"Oh, it can't be too far to walk," said Jesse, staring up at the peacock feathers. "After all, your wife has Sally walk there." 

There was a long pause, which Carr contemplated breaking, but he was too interested to see how his father would reply. 

When his father answered, it was with an edge to his voice. "Are you criticizing a decision my wife has made?" 

"Do I look crazy?" Bringing his gaze down, Jesse grinned. 

Carr bit his lip to keep back the answer that leapt to his mind. His father, though, had apparently decided to give Jesse the benefit of the doubt. "No, of course not," he replied. "I would recommend the boat journey, if you're not prone to seasickness, as my son is." He gave Carr a quirk of a smile, and Carr emitted a breath of a laugh. In any other Bay-area family, his tendency to grow sick on anything except the largest ships would have qualified him for unending ridicule. But his father, having endured far worse ridicule himself, was always careful to refrain from mocking Carr over matters he could not help. 

Carr had tried to convince himself that this tolerance would extend farther than it currently did. He had never quite succeeded. 

"Boat sounds good," replied Jesse. "Maybe I can learn to sail while I'm here. Got to take advantage of the surroundings to learn new skills, you know."


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

"How did this happen?" 

Carr stared at his study, which had been transformed during the time since he and Jesse had left the second floor of the mansion. The desk and file cabinet were gone; in place of them were a bed, a dresser, and all the small items that a guest might require. 

The furniture, Carr supposed, must have come from the attic, which was overflowing with family heirlooms. But only two of the servants had sufficient muscle to have brought them here: Variel and Bat. And since both men had served at supper . . . 

"Guess someone overheard our conversation in the bedroom, huh?" Jesse, who had expressed desire for a brief nap after the meal, did not seem overly concerned. He was busy examining a shelf above the bed's headboard; the shelf was stacked with old school notebooks. "These look like they might come down on my head in the middle of the night." 

"I'll take them away," said Carr, but found himself hampered from reaching them by the width of the bed. 

"Allow me, master." 

Carr heard the voice – especially the final word – like the jolt of a sting-ray all through his body. He backed up. Variel, as neatly dressed in his uniform as ever, stepped forward and reached up for the notebooks. As he did so, his jacket hiked up, showing his shirt, and the muscles beneath. Although he had been a domestic servant all his life, Variel liked to spend his days off with the House's watermen, helping to move supplies at the dock. As a result, his musculature was that of a waterman, not of a soft servant. 

Variel turned back. "May I help you in any other fashion, master?" 

The valet's voice was cool. Belatedly, Carr realized he was staring. Also belatedly, he realized he was sweating. 

He resisted the urge to wipe the sweat off his face. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, "Thank you, Variel. That will be all." 

"Master." Variel bowed toward Carr – but not toward Jesse, Carr couldn't help but notice – and left the study, closing the door behind him. 

"Before supper or after?" Jesse evidently had the mind of a strategist; he was still trying to tease out the chronology. 

"Before supper. Bat's uniform looked somewhat mussed during supper. Variel would have had to help him, though." Carr slipped the notebooks into one of the dresser drawers. They contained his painfully neat handwriting and equally painfully exact notetaking. 

"So Variel took it upon himself to decide that I was staying, even before you or your father announced that I was? Interesting." 

Carr was thinking that as well. He was also noticing that Variel had not approved of Jesse's proposal that he sleep in the same bedroom as Carr. That might only have been because Variel considered it unsuitable that M Carruthers share his bedroom with a lower-ranked master. But given that Variel must have overheard Jesse offering his body . . . Carr's face grew hot. 

"Interesting fellow, Variel." Jesse's voice was just a little too casual. "Egalitarian, like your parents?" 

Carr shook his head as he turned away from the dresser. "He used to serve my uncle, back in the days when my uncle ran this House. My uncle holds to traditional beliefs on mastery and service, and I think Variel does too. But he follows my father's order that he address masters and mastresses in this House as equals." 

"Except when he's in private with you, huh?" Jesse was far too quick. "Interesting fellow . . . and perceptive." 

Carr did not want to think about what this meant. "Shall I show you the chapel?" 

"Later. It's nap-time for me. Wake me when it's time to say goodnight to your folks, will you?" Jesse began to strip off his tunic. 

Carr hastily retreated, closing the door behind him. So Jesse's "brief nap" was going to take all evening? For the first time, Carr wondered whether Jesse regarded Cliffsdale Mansion as nothing more than a free hotel in which to stay, and Carr as nothing more than a chatty hotel-keeper. 

o—o—o

Late that evening, standing at the doorway to the summer kitchen, Carr wondered, as always, whether he ought to be there. 

The kitchen was housed in a small, square building beyond the Death Wing which was traditionally called – much to the dismay of Carr's parents – the dependency. The dependency was made of brick and stood two floors in height. The second floor was devoted to food storage, though in Carr's grandfather's time the kitchen servants had slept there, ready to offer service at any time of night or day that their master required it. Now the servants slept in greater comfort in the mansion, but they were always to be found in the kitchen at this time of day, relaxing in the hours after the master and mastress had retired to bed. They were all there now. 

The dependency was divided in two by a massive fireplace that, even in this day, was occasionally used for warming oyster stew in an ancient black pot. Bat and Sally were sitting on the rough bench in front of the fireplace on the kitchen side of the building; perhaps mindful of their elders' presence, they sat slightly apart from each other. In the crowded confines of the kitchen, it was not far from them to Cook (she had a name, but she was always called Cook), who was supervising Millie – the loquacious, cheeky scullery girl – as she cleaned ashes from the cold stove. Nearby, Irene leaned on the cutting table, looking exhausted. Carr's mother, declaring she had little need for her lady's maid, had set Irene to do "light duties," which turned out to consist of a daily cleaning of every room in the mansion. It had taken Carr quite a while to persuade his mother to hire Sally to assist Irene. Both his mother and his father were firmly convinced that the mansion should have fewer servants, not more. 

Bat too was supposed to serve as an assistant, helping Variel, though as far as Carr could tell, Variel required help from no one, being supremely efficient at his work. Variel was standing near the back window, slightly aloof from the servants he supervised, but with his jacket off, a silent indicator that he would not be issuing reprimands unless forced to by blatant ill behavior. Millie rose to her feet and tossed a remark at him, and a suggestion of a smile appeared on his face— 

—but at that moment Millie noticed an intrusion. Her ever-rolling chatter died. So did Variel's smile. Alerted by this, everyone turned to look at their master's son. 

There was a space of silence, as always. Carr had never quite been able to determine the meaning of that silence. He broke it by clearing his throat. "I'm sorry to interrupt," he said, "but do you think it would be possible for me to have a cup of tea?" 

At his words, the entire room swung into action, as though the servants were marionettes whose weak limbs had been strengthened by the touch of the puppeteer's hand. Millie quickly went down on her knees to scoop coal into the stove. Cook took hold of the teakettle. Irene opened the ice box where the milk was kept. Sally hurried over, curtsied, and said, "Will you come this way, please, sir, I mean comrade?" 

He followed her to the back room, where a tablecloth was always kept laid on the rough-planed table there. She seated him, then retreated to the kitchen. Her presence was quickly replaced by Bat, who brought in firewood and kindling, and Variel, who held the matchbox. 

Under Variel's whispered orders, Bat got the fire going. The two men left the hearth ablaze, withdrawing to the kitchen. Before long, Sally appeared again, awkwardly balancing a tray holding a steeped cup of tea, a sugar bowl, a milk pitcher, and a plate with exactly two sugar cookies. She did not need to ask how many cookies he wanted; that had become clear to the servants many years ago, when he first began this ritual. 

Nonetheless, she maintained the polite fiction that this was all new, and that Carr's arrival was nothing more than the spontaneous whim of a young master who was sleepless. "Sugar or milk, sir, I mean comrade?" she asked as she put down the items in front of him. 

"No, thank you," he replied. Then he added, as he always did, "Thank you for your service, Sally." 

"It's a pleasure, sir." Dimpling, Sally curtsied and retreated, forgetting, for the moment, that she was supposed to be his equal. 

He sipped the tea slowly, his eye on the fire, leaving the cookies for last as a reward – though a reward for what, he could not say. 

In the next room, the voices continued, lower now, but the words could be distinguished over the clatter of dishes that Millie was beginning to wash. The servants were discussing the prospects for the upcoming summer's crab harvest – a safe enough topic, since the crab harvest, unlike the oyster harvest, was gathered close to home. 

The voices were all as familiar to Carr as a lullaby. Other than Bat and Sally, all of the servants had lived in the mansion for his entire life; even Millie was a season older than him. There had been four times as many servants at Cliffsdale Mansion in his grandfather's day, as well as during his uncle's time. But when his uncle departed the mansion, as men in his family always did when they reached their inheritance, he had taken with him most of the servants. Carr's parents had never replaced the missing servants. 

The fire, warm and hungry, ate at the chill air. The tea heated Carr's throat and stomach. The voices continued in the next room, hushed so as not to disturb the young master. He reached for the sugar cookies, feeling the pleasure of the moment, and feeling the sickness that always accompanied his uncertainty as to the nature of the pleasure. 

o—o—o

In one of the clearest harbingers of the arrival of Spring Transformation, Carr's mother ordered next morning's breakfast to be served on the terrace. 

The air was crisp as Carr waited for Bat to pull out a chair for him; on the other side of the table, Variel and Irene were performing the same service for Carr's father and mother. Grinning as though he were watching a contorted barbarian ritual, Jesse slipped into his seat before Variel could reach the other side of the table to pull out his chair. 

Carr's father was too absorbed with the morning paper to notice. It was a regular ritual in their household: while lunch and supper were reserved for conversation, reading matter held reign at the breakfast table. Carr's mother was already flipping through a copy of _The Emancipation of the Dozen Landsteads' Mastresses_ – the twelfth or so time she had reread the first book that Carr's father had written, which had created such a stir at its time of publication, seven tri-years before. 

Bat dropped a spoon he had been about to place at Carr's setting; wincing, he reached down to pick it up from the mosaic that decorated the terrace pavement. The spoon had landed somewhere in the First Landstead. Brushing off the spoon hastily, he placed it on the table, glancing warily at Carr. Carr pretended not to notice, picking up a copy of a schoolbook he was studying for his final examinations in the autumn. He had brought to the table a second book for Jesse – a scientifiction novel from his personal collection – but his guest, yawning in an ostentatious manner, picked up the front section of the newspaper, which Carr's father had abandoned in favor of the business section. 

"Oyster harvests are down again this year in the Fifth Landstead," Carr's father mentioned without looking up from his newspaper and his toast covered with watermelon rind preserves. 

"Really, dear?" Carr's mother promptly raised her eyes from her book. She was very proud of the fact that her husband discussed business with her, which few upper landstead men would have done. Alas, she had no head for business. "Do oysters no longer sell well, then?" 

Irene smothered a laugh, which Carr's father fortunately did not hear. "Oysters continue to sell exceedingly well," he replied to Carr's mother, with the usual patience he showed toward her. "The problem is that the oysters at the southern end of the Bay have been dying off for the past few seasons. That's due to run-off from the chemical factories in the First Landstead, I've no doubt." He speared a piece of rockfish on his plate. "I really must drop a line to Cousin Joseph before the problem reaches up-Bay. —Variel, we seem to be out of preserves." 

"Oh, I'll get the preserves!" cried his mother promptly, rising so quickly that she jarred the arm of Bat, who had been about to serve her. Hot tea spilled on his hand, but the young footman bit his tongue and remained silent. Variel quickly came over to take the tea cup from him. 

Carr's mother, meanwhile, had reached the wheeled serving table on the terrace and had succeeded in spilling the salt shaker and dropping preserves into the sugar bowl. Irene hovered nearby, dismay clear on her face at the mess she would have to clean up. 

"Here we are!" His mother gaily returned to the table, showing off the silver bowl of preserves. Bat hastened to give her wide berth as she swung her arm upward triumphantly. "You see? No need to send the servants to do so small a job." 

"You are quite right, sweet one. You are a constant model for me." Carr's father looked up from the newspaper, smiling. 

Carr glanced over at Jesse, who seemed unusually quiet this morning. The young foreigner, Carr saw, was reading a sixth-page story headlined, "Abolitionist Incursion into the Second Landstead." Carr tried to lean over further to see the rest of the article, but at that moment, Jesse carefully folded the newspaper so that the sixth page was now on the top. He placed the newspaper equally carefully in front of Carr's father. 

Carr's father, pausing to scoop some late-season oysters into his mouth, absentmindedly fished for the front section of the newspaper and took it in hand. Carr held his breath. Jesse pretended to be reading the comics in the children's section of the newspaper. 

"Sweet blood!" exclaimed Carr's father, dropping his fork. It landed on the mosaic rendering of the Second Landstead. 

"Is there news from the Third Landstead?" asked Carr's mother sympathetically. Bad news these days always came from the Third Landstead. 

"Listen to this," said Carr's father, not looking up from the article. "'Last night, shortly before this newspaper went to press, posters were found plastered upon the exterior of the Bureau of Employment, proclaiming Abolitionist sentiments. The posters encouraged servants to leave their masters and fight for their rights—' The fools!" 

"The Abolitionists?" Carr's mother guessed. 

"The newspaper, for printing such provocative material. And why haven't I been informed of this incident? I must call the office." Pulling his napkin from his lap and dropping it onto his half-cleared plate, Carr's father hurried from the room. 

Jesse said, "He should be pleased at this news, right? You both want the servants to be emancipated." 

Carr exchanged looks with his mother. After a minute, Carr's father returned, saying, "I can't get through on the phone. The Bureau must be jammed with calls. That our landstead, of all landsteads, should be inflicted with this horror!" 

"Horror? Abolitionists?" Jesse stifled another yawn. 

"My husband has a plan," Carr's mother explained. "A very clever plan for the emancipation of this landstead's servants." 

"But having radicals stir up trouble in this landstead will wreck my plan." Carr's father was now pacing back and forth by the terrace doors, running his hand through his well-oiled hair. "We were within a breath of expanding servants' rights a tri-decade ago. But then Abolitionists attacked the House of Government and tried to kill the High Master. Since then, it's been next to impossible to persuade the High Master and his councillors to take action. I had hoped, after we put down the last Abolitionists . . . It must be the Third Landstead." He hissed the final words of his pronouncement. 

"Do you really think so?" Carr's mother responded with interest. She was not very knowledgeable in politics either. 

"The High Master of the Third Landstead is a Reformed Traditionalist," Carr pointed out. "He'd hardly countenance Abolitionists in his landstead." 

"So instead he'd send them here, to make trouble." Carr's father paused to look over the terrace railing. The morning air was clear; the thin, dark line on the other side of the Bay could be easily seen. "It's just the sort of conniving act I would expect from Aloysius Rudd." 

"Dear, we mustn't leap to conclusions," his mother gently chided. "It could be that these Abolitionists are native-grown. Some of the servants are overly impatient for emancipation, poor things." 

"True, true." Carr's father pushed himself away from the terrace railing; his momentary burst of indignation was followed, as it so often was, by dreary melancholy. "You are right to remind me of that. How long must these miserable folk wait? —Irene, more tea for your mastress." 

Bat, who was the actual servant in charge of pouring tea, stepped forward, keeping a wary eye on Carr's mother, who was prone to sudden movements. 

"Yeah, so how long _do_ they have to wait?" Jesse paused in the midst of another yawn. "How long does this emancipation plan of yours take?" 

"Exactly as long as necessary." Carr's father returned to the table. Variel was on hand to pull back his chair. 

Jesse shrugged. "Maybe there are some shortcuts you could take." 

"It is that kind of thinking which leads to this trouble." Carr's father waved his hand at the newspaper. "Listen again. 'A stop-the-press report arrived at this newspaper late this evening that Master Lovett of Avondale has found a note from his valet on his night-stand tonight, in which his valet stated he was leaving his position "in order to go to a place where servants are truly free." Master Lovett said that he has alerted the border guards and has placed a reward on his valet's return.'" 

"I thought slavery was abolished here," Jesse commented. 

Carr took the trouble to hook that difficult fish, since his father was staring blankly at Jesse. "Servants may serve any master they wish, but they must go through a formal procedure when changing employers. Their former master must sign their certificate of employment, and give references if he wishes. If the references are sufficient, the Bureau of Employment will find a new position for the servant." 

"And if the references aren't sufficient, the Bureau won't?" Jesse leaned back in his chair. "Nice set-up you guys have here. The only way a servant can find a new master is if his master likes him enough to give him a reference, but doesn't like him enough to give him a bad reference, in order to keep him from being employed elsewhere." 

"The Bureau will intervene in cases where the servant clearly was misjudged by his previous master," Carr's father said, frowning. "But in a case like this, where the servant has evidently been consorting with criminal elements— Variel, the telephone." 

Variel had already begun to hurry back into the house, responding to the ring. Grinning, Jesse said, "Criminal elements move fast. Wouldn't you say so, M Carruthers?" 

Carr remained silent. Variel returned, saying, "It's the High Master, Comrade Carruthers. He wishes to speak with you concerning last night's incident." 

"Tell him I'm on my way to the House of Government now." Rising, Carr's father leaned over to kiss his wife's cheek. "Don't get up, sweet one. Have yourself a leisurely breakfast while I deal with this. I'm sure it's all a minor tempest and will be over soon." 

"Just like the northwest blow," said Jesse cheekily. Carr shot him a glance, wondering with whom his guest had been discussing Landstead weather. Seeing Carr look his way, Jesse yawned again in a blatant manner. 

This time, even Carr's mother couldn't miss the act. "Did you sleep well?" she asked. 

"Barely slept at all," Jesse replied promptly. "I was up all night, touring Solomons Island and Avondale." 

"Oh, dear." Carr's mother tossed her napkin to the ground, where it was discreetly retrieved by Variel. "You mustn't wear yourself out on your holiday. I believe I know of an herbal tea that will help you to sleep this evening. Irene! Irene, please help me find that recipe for camomile tea which my grandmother invented. I'll make the tea myself . . ." She hurried off, accompanied by Irene, who was stumbling to keep pace with her. 

That left Carr and Jesse alone at the table. Variel and Bat had retreated to the serving table. Jesse raised his eyebrows, waiting. 

Carr said, "It's a pleasant day. Would you like to go sailing?" 

Jesse laughed, as though Carr had made a joke. "Yeah, I suppose so. Before I take a short nap this afternoon. I'm going to be up late tonight again." 

"Where would you like to sail?" Carr asked, refusing to be lured. 

Jesse dropped his meat knife deliberately on the mosaic. "There." 

Carr leaned over to look. The knife had landed on the western border of the Ninth Landstead.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

"Hey," said Jesse, leaning his arms upon the curved railing of the steamer's bow, "did you know that you're in enemy territory?" 

Carr turned his head to look at the young man. He could barely see Jesse. Other masters besides themselves had ventured onto the topmost, viewing deck of the steamer – reserved for the pleasure of first-ranked masters and mastresses and their guests – in order to watch the dawn. But the captain of the steamer had kept the deck lights off, so as to provide fine viewing of the shoreline they were currently steaming alongside: Hoopers Island, actually a chain of three narrow islands off the mainland of the Third Landstead. 

This was the third day of Carr and Jesse's trip through the Dozen Landsteads. At Jesse's suggestion, they had made plans to visit Balmer, the port capital of the Ninth Landstead, which lay up-Bay of the Second Landstead. Balmer was the only town in the Dozen Landsteads that was large enough to qualify as a city, so Carr wasn't surprised that Jesse wanted to visit it. 

But thanks to a bitter trade dispute that had unexpectedly sprung up between the Second Landstead and the adjoining Eighth Landstead, all steamer service had abruptly stopped along the Western Shore of the Bay. As a result, any Second Landsteader travelling by water to Balmer was now forced to undertake a circuitous route: by private boat from Solomons Island to Smith Island in the Fifth Landstead, the landstead furthest down-Bay; by ferry from Smith Island to Crisfield, on the Fifth Landstead's mainland, which constituted part of the Eastern Shore of the Bay; by steamer from Crisfield to Salisbury, the capital of the Fourth Landstead, also on the Eastern Shore; and then a transfer to another steamer that made its painfully slow way down-river from the Fourth Landstead, through the Hooper Strait, up the Honga River to Hoopers Island, and proceeded to make its way back down the Honga River till it reached the Bay. The steamer would then stop at more wharves along the Eastern Shore before finally crossing the Bay to arrive at Balmer. 

It would have been far, far easier for Carr to order Variel to drive them to Balmer. So his father had pointed out, frowning when he realized that Carr's route would take him through the landstead that a member of the House of His Master's Kindness should be most assiduous to avoid, unless he was in a boat that could retreat swiftly. 

Carr – who had envisioned the consequences of spending several hours confined in the same motorcar as Variel – had said to his father what he now said to Jesse: "My face isn't well known outside of my own House. I don't look like my father, and the newspapers aren't permitted to print my picture before I turn twenty-one. . . . How did you know that we were in hostile territory?" He kept his voice low enough that it could barely be heard under the soft splash of the water-paddle and the flutter of the steamer's flags. Most of the masters on the viewing deck were at the stern of the steamer, watching the sun rise over the castle on Lower Hoopers Island, but a few, like Carr and Jesse, had wandered up to the bow in order to watch the landscape ahead brighten. 

Jesse shrugged. "Rumors. There are lots of rumors, down below." 

Carr gave him a lingering look. One-third of an hour into the voyage from Salisbury, he had discovered that Jesse was missing from his stateroom, which was next to Carr's. Carr had searched all the rooms on the stateroom deck: the barber shop, the first-ranked masters' saloon, the masters' water closet, the dining room, and even – by way of a helpful mastress – the mastresses' water closet. His search was fruitless. 

A quick check of the viewing deck had showed that Jesse had not managed to finagle his way past the guards there. So Carr had gone below to explore the main deck: the second- and third-ranked masters' saloon, the galley, the mailroom, the package room, and the barroom. 

Finally, with no other options left, he had ventured into the bowels of the ship. Jesse was not in the cargo hold, nor in the boiler room, nor in the engine room. Instead, he turned out to be in the crammed space in the bow where the male servants slept, both the servant passengers and the servant crew. He was sitting on one of the bunk beds, listening to the servants tell bawdy jokes about the master of the House of His Master's Kindness. 

The jokes had cut off like a mast in a hurricane when Carr entered the room. Pretending that he had not heard the jokes, Carr had politely asked for Jesse's assistance in shifting the location of his trunk – a plausible excuse, for Jesse had insisted that they make this voyage without any accompanying servants. Jesse, smirking, had offered his farewells to the servants and had returned to the masters' decks. 

Now Jesse said, "The servants didn't tell me why you Second Landsteaders are the enemy, though. They seemed to assume I'd know." 

Carr mumbled something unintelligible. He was acutely conscious that, on this stage of the voyage, nearly all of the passengers were from the Third Landstead, and that first-ranked masters from that landstead were standing near him on the viewing deck. Fortunately, he recognized none of them; the dispute between the Third and Second Landsteads had been in existence long enough now that Carr had never been introduced socially to the heads of the Houses in this landstead. 

Only to their sons. 

Now he said, to avoid an unpleasant discussion, "We're coming up on the lowest of the three islands that make up Hoopers Island. Beyond that is the middle island, where we'll dock. My school is on the middle island." 

"You're one fucking brave kid," said Jesse; his tone suggested that he was only half in jest. "You chose a school that's in enemy territory?" 

Carr shook his head. His eye was on the landscape sliding by: the lower island, where the High Masters' council made its home in the crumbling castle, and beyond it, Hickory Cove on the middle island, where the steamer wharf reached forth from the land like a dredge reaching out to lick an oyster bar. He pointed. "You see that land jutting out just before the cove? Well, on the Bay side of it is a peninsula. Richland Point, it's called." 

"Richland." Jesse seemed to think this was hysterically funny; he laughed a long time before saying, "And that's where your school is." 

Carr nodded. "The school is owned by the High Masters and is open to students from any landstead. The land it's on was a gift from a previous High Master of the Third Landstead to the High Masters' council." Privately, he suspected that that particular High Master had simply been trying to get rid of unwanted marshland. If so, he had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: in the past five tri-decades, shore erosion had eaten away two-thirds of Richland Point, so that its ancient lamphouse was barely connected now to the rest of the middle island. The remaining land – painfully reclaimed marshland surrounded by still-existing marshland – was filled with vicious mosquitoes in the summer and was far too isolated in the winter. The current Head Master of the school cheerfully gave talks in chapel about the effect of the school's location on hardening the students' self-discipline. 

All well and good, but if the shore erosion continued at its present pace, Richland Point, and the school located on it, would disappear by the end of the present tri-century. Carr thought to himself that he ought to ask one of the scientific-minded members of his school what the cause of the rapid erosion was. There was a student in his own form whom he might ask . . . but Meredith was in the Third House, which meant that Carr would have to go through laborious negotiations with Meredith's liege-master in order to speak with the lad. 

Jesse was saying, "So the locals don't bother you?" 

"No, Hoopers Island is mainly inhabited by servants. There are a few third-ranked masters living there – mainly boat-masters – but almost no masters of higher rank. Even Hoopers Island's fleet master lives on the mainland, at Golden Hill." 

"That's where the Third Landstead's heir makes his home, right?" Jesse leaned forward, as though he might see the mansion of the heirship House that stood a few miles up-Bay of Hoopers Island. "What about the land past the steamboat wharf on this island? What's there?" 

"Just more watermen's houses. You can't see most of them from this part of the river. Up there at Bentley Cove—" He pointed at the jut of land on the middle island that obscured their view of the upper island. "That's all marshland. We'd have to travel to the upper island before we saw any signs of community again. There's another harbor up there – Back Creek – as well as Long Creek and Gunners Cove, though not many watermen live next to Gunners Cove." 

"Why do they call it Gunners Cove?" Jesse asked. 

At that moment, clear as a crack of Bay ice at the end of winter, came the sound of gunfire. In the same instant, the fleet of the House of His Master's Kindness burst round Bentley Point, rushing like Ammippian war arrows through the grey dawn. 

"Down!" shouted Carr, envisioning what would come next; for extra measure, he grabbed Jesse and pulled him prone to the deck. 

Aware of his responsibilities as the highest-ranked master on the steamer, he raised his torso high enough to see what lay behind him. But no mastresses or children were on the viewing deck, and all of the masters – heeding the warning of Carr's shout or of the gunfire – had either fled through the doors to the lower decks or were flattening themselves against the deck. Carr turned his head toward the water in time to see, through the railings, an Oyster Navy schooner dash around Bentley Point, hot in pursuit of the skipjacks. The police had evidently not yet noticed the steamboat ahead, for the cannon on the schooner's bow boomed. The cannonball sped across the water and plunged into the river, just ahead of the steamer. The steamer emitted a loud whistle of protest. 

The fleet of His Master's Kindness, sensing salvation, sped toward the steamer, the skipjacks' sails full and proud in the breeze. As the fleet passed the bow of the steamer, Carr caught a glimpse of Rowlett, standing in the foremost boat and shouting orders to the captains of the boats behind him. Then the skipjacks were out of sight, hidden behind the squat steamer. 

The Oyster Navy sent another rain of rifle bullets in the direction of the fleet. Some of the bullets hit the steamer; women screamed on the lower decks. Then the rifles were silent; the naval police dared not fire at the skipjacks once they were hidden behind a steamer crowded with masters and their families. Already, Carr could hear the masters behind him growling their indignation at the policemen's action. 

Cautiously rising to his feet, Carr turned his head to look toward the stern. His House's fleet was well away now, rounding the lower island. From there, the boats would have an easy journey home to Carruthers Cliffs Cove; once upon the waters of the Bay, they would be free from pursuit, for the Oyster Navy had no power to arrest any watermen plying the wideness of the Bay waters. Only the shorelines and estuaries and winding rivers and creeks belonged to individual landsteads. 

Narrowing his eyes, Carr caught a glimpse of the dawn sunlight flashing off high mounds of oyster-shells on the retreating skipjacks. A good haul, especially for so late in the season; Carr's father would be satisfied by the night's work. The Third Landstead's tongers – whose oyster bars the dredgers had just invaded – would be less than satisfied. 

Carr was not as worried about them than as he was about the Oyster Navy. 

"You give fucking exciting tours, Carruthers," Jesse said cheerfully as he rose and brushed the dust off his recently bought trousers. "Who's the boys in blue over there? The ones who are looking like the mice got away from the cat?" He pointed at the police schooner, which – in defiance to watermen's tradition – was painted blue to represent the policemen's desire to transform criminals. The schooner had stopped alongside the steamer, no doubt so that the police could check that they had not injured any masters or mastresses. 

"Excuse me," Carr said, his voice more rough than he would have liked. "I need to see whether anyone was hurt on the other decks." 

To his credit, Jesse immediately stored away his smile. "Yeah, you're right. Stupid of me. I'll check the servants' deck; you check the rest." 

An hour later, they met in Jesse's stateroom and exchanged the same report: the only injury was to a policeman who had been winged by a bullet during the initial firefight between the Second Landsteaders and the Oyster Navy. As ill fortune would have it, the policeman was from the Third Landstead – was in fact the older brother of Meredith's liege-master. Carr set aside his concern about what had happened to the watermen on the boats of the House of His Master's Kindness. He had other matters weighing on his mind. 

He had felt obliged to introduce himself to the commander of the Oyster Navy, since the man had been appointed to his position by Carr's own uncle. The interview had not gone well. Carr had escaped further grilling only by insisting that, being a journeyman, he could not speak on his House's behalf. He had invited the commander to make an official protest by way of Carr's uncle. Carr was well aware that this would only shift the danger to another man, but what else could he do? Comrade Benjamin Carruthers's dredgers had been in waters where they did not belong, and for once they had been caught in the act of stealing. That they had managed to escape with their stolen goods could not ameliorate the consequences of orders issued by the master of the House of His Master's Kindness. 

"Okay," said Jesse, when Carr had explained, as best he could, what had taken place. "So what you're saying is that it's against the high law for your dad's fleet to catch oysters in another landstead, the Oyster Navy was started by the High Masters to enforce your nation's oyster laws, and your dad's fleet fled when they were on the point of arrest. For fuck's sake, Carruthers – how long has your dad been at this sort of thing?" 

"Three and two-thirds tri-years." 

"Eleven years." Jesse shook his head. "And nobody has thrown him in jail yet? I'm surprised that the High Master of your landstead hasn't removed him from power. Unless your dad does this with your High Master's permission?" 

Carr cleared his throat as he sat down on the bed. He could hear all the ordinary sounds of steamer life: people chatting, the whoosh of the engine, the mooing of cattle on the freight deck, and the swish of waves. "No. Our High Master was the one who suggested that the council start a naval police to patrol the shorelines and the inland waters. He was trying to prevent further fighting between the Second Landstead and the Third Landstead." 

"Fighting?" Jesse, who had been leaning over to stare out the porthole, straightened up. 

"With firearms. When we first heard rifle-fire this morning, I thought it was from the Hoopers Island tongers, defending their waters against the invading dredgers." 

"Tongers? Dredgers?" Jesse sat down on the bed beside him. 

It took Carr a while to explain, partly because of an interlude in which Jesse explained how danger always made him "horny." Fortunately, Jesse took gracefully Carr's second rejection. 

The conversation about methods of catching oysters took them away from the dangerous topics of sex and politics. At the end of the conversation, though, the young foreigner asked a question that – Carr was beginning to realize – was inevitable from Jesse: "What do your dad's servants think about all this?" 

"The watermen, you mean?" Carr hesitated before giving an indirect answer. "Well, it's not as though my father invented the idea of watermen venturing into the waters of other landsteads. Even the Third Landstead watermen have done that; every winter, there'll be disputes between the Third and Fourth Landstead tongers over which landstead owns the river that divides them. So watermen are used to fighting over territory." 

"Yeah, okay, but you're not talking about watermen fighting over oyster bars in a river that they both live next to. You're talking about your dad's dredgers sailing over a fucking wide Bay to reach the Third Landstead. What do his dredgers think of that?" 

He met Jesse's eyes then. "They're proud of it, most of them. They admire my father's boldness. They like the idea of stealing other men's oysters under the very nose of the Oyster Navy. Does that fit in with your idea that the masters in this nation are to blame for all the troubles here?" 

Jesse winced. "Ouch. No. Okay, I get you. It's not just masters versus servants. It's landstead versus landstead." 

"It's always been that way." Carr rose from the bed, kneading the back of his neck. "The Alliance of the Dozen Landsteads is just that: a fragile alliance of landsteads that have gone to war with each other many times over the tri-centuries." 

"And they could go to war again, over this?" Jesse raised his eyes, sharp and thoughtful, to meet Carr's. 

Carr was slow in responding. "Not if our High Master can prevent it." 

Any reply Jesse might have made was obscured by a soft thud from the steamer, which had finally continued on its journey and had now reached the wharf at Hickory Cove, next to Hoopersville. Looking out of the porthole, Carr saw that the stevedores on the wharf were wasting no time in hefting forward the barrels and crates and sacks that awaited loading. Later in the year, the stevedores would be loading the bounty of the crabbing season: crabs, fish, and terrapins. Cantaloupes would wait alongside watermelons, while chickens would cackle in crates. Now, in the earliest days of warm weather, the offerings were more sparse: mainly the fur of muskrats that had been trapped on the mainland. 

The island received bounty in exchange for its offerings. As Carr watched, the steamer's stevedores began hauling out some of the steamboat's cargo from Salisbury: canned food; molasses and flour and sugar; bolts of cloth for the women . . . 

Carr blinked. Emerging from the steamer's hold, with a bolt of cloth tucked under his arm, was Jesse, who had slipped out of the stateroom without a sound. Jesse whistled between his teeth as he tossed the bolt into the waiting arms of a stevedore. 

Carr watched Jesse's antics for a while, a question forming in his mind. Then, for lack of an answer, he glanced over at the table beside Jesse's bed. 

If Jesse still possessed the gun, it remained hidden in his travelling bag. He had carefully stacked the guidebooks on the table, though. The topmost one, with its garish cover showing Prison City, had a bit of notepaper stuck in it as a bookmark. Carr carefully opened the book. 

The words on the paper were in surprisingly neat handwriting. "Anna's Port," it said. "Thirty miles from Green Village." 

Carr checked the entry for Green Village in the guidebook. Then he closed the book reflectively. Anna's Port was not one of this steamer's stops; Jesse would receive no easy opportunity to cross the border and visit Green Village in the First Landstead – nor Prison City, which lay below the village. Carr wondered whether Jesse knew that. On further reflection, he decided that it would be best not to raise the topic. 

Instead, he took the second book from the stack – _A Concise History of the Dozen Landsteads_ – and settled down to read about the history of the Second Landstead, and about the family that had reigned over it since ancient times.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

Nine days later, Carr and Jesse stood at the window of Carr's room. Carr was teaching Jesse how to shuck an oyster when Variel appeared unexpectedly, like a newborn soul popping into a baby, and murmured something into Carr's ear. 

"Oh, bloody _blades_!" cried Carr. Then, as Jesse raised his eyebrows at Carr's uncharacteristic use of profanity, Carr added, "Are my parents at home?" 

Variel gave a lift of the eyebrows that might have meant anything. Carr turned away, throwing the oyster through the open window and wiping his hands on his trousers – which, alas, promptly stained themselves. He looked down, wondering whether he had time to change, then wondered whether it would be at all wise to ask Variel to valet in place of Bat. But the temptation was only fleeting; Variel had already withdrawn. 

"Trouble?" asked Jesse, leaning back against the wall, and taking on the look of faint amusement that seemed his automatic response to trouble. 

"Not if my parents aren't here. Come on." 

Jesse raised his eyebrows again at the peremptory tone, but he followed Carr through the bedroom, down the hallway stairs, and into the foyer. There the visitor awaited Carr. 

He was in his eighteenth tri-year and growing stout with age, his skin pale in the manner of a man who has scarcely set his foot outside a building all his life. His hands were smooth, showing no sign that he had ever done menial labor inside a building either. His overcoat lay over his left arm, while his right hand held a cigar. The cigar was carefully poised over the foyer's ashtray, which Carr's mother had set out for visitors. The visitor's gaze was resting, in a deceptively vague fashion, upon a woven banner that Carr's mother had recently ordered the servants to hang from the high ceiling, much to the consternation of the servants, since it had taken them a third of a day to figure out how to attach the banner to the ceiling without bringing plaster down onto everyone's heads. Since the banner was not woven by Carr's mother, the words on it were easily legible: "Freedom for all!" 

The visitor's gaze slipped away from the banner as Carr and Jesse entered the foyer, and suddenly the vagueness snapped away, with a visible crack like a sail in a high wind. Carr, after one last glance toward the open door of his father's library, did not hesitate. He walked over to the visitor and knelt upon his right knee. 

It took him a moment to fumble his left arm into the correct position, even though he had been practicing this pose in front of his bedroom mirror since he reached his seventeenth sun-circuit. With his left hand clasping the inside of his right elbow, in the manner that had denoted subservience in all of the Midcoast nations since the sixteenth tri-century, he bowed his head and asked, "What service do you require of me, master?" 

He thought he heard Jesse's breath rush in, but he could not be certain. What he was sure of was that he heard the man above him chuckle. He felt himself tense, and then he relaxed again as the visitor said, "Oh, my – it has been half my lifetime since I heard those words from a master in this House. And with so traditional a posture as well." 

Approval coated his voice. Carr ventured to tilt his head up; he found that the visitor was smiling down at him. "And how is my favorite nephew?" the visitor asked, placing his free palm lightly upon Carr's head. "I had lunch with your Head Master this week, and he let drop that he plans to make you Captain of your House at school next autumn. That will be the first time in over a tri-century that a lad of the Second House has been both Games Captain _and_ Head Prefect." 

Overwhelmed by the moment, Carr was still trying to think of a suitably modest reply when a cry came: _"Carr!"_ His mother sounded as shocked as though she had found him raping one of the servants. 

He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sound and return to the gloriousness of the moment, but his uncle's hand had already dropped from his head. "Carr!" repeated his mother, and now she was beside him. "_What_ are you doing?" 

"He is greeting me in an appropriate manner," said his uncle, placing his cigar in the ashtray and reaching down to help Carr to his feet. "As is his right. He is not a child any more, Daisy. How are you, sweet one?" As he spoke, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. 

She was not to be mollified, though. "Geoffrey, you know what I mean. We do not practice the obeisance in this household. We are all equals here. —Variel, take my brother's coat at once." 

Variel, who had appeared beside Jesse, murmured an acknowledgment and stepped forward. Without looking in Variel's direction, Uncle Geoffrey handed him the overcoat and hat and began drawing off his gloves. "Daisy, do I need to remind you that Carr has reached his journeyman years? Or that he will be entering university in the next sun-circuit? A tri-year after that, he will enter my House, and I assure you, the obeisance is practiced by the lesser masters of my House – both to me, and between lesser masters of different rank. I would have thought" – his voice grew dry – "that you would be pleased to witness your son offering service." 

"That is _not_ the point. —Drinks, Variel, right away. —The point is that the obeisance began in the days when all lesser masters were little more than slaves to the High Master. That is the sort of world we are fighting to abolish!" His mother stood upright, her body framed by the banner behind her. 

"Mm" was Uncle Geoffrey's only reply. As he turned to take a glass of sweet cider that Variel had miraculously managed to pour and serve in the space of seconds, he gave Carr one of the quick, ironic smiles that had thrilled Carr from his childhood. As usual, Carr felt a familiar churning in his stomach, as though his pleasure at seeing the smile was a betrayal by himself of his parents' ideals, even though he had never acknowledged his uncle's ironic smiles in any visible manner. 

"Really, Daisy," his uncle said mildly, "for a woman who is admirably concerned with providing freedom to the downtrodden, you sometimes treat your own son as though he were a mere puppet of your will. You may, of course, enforce whatever rules you wish within your own House, but why not reconcile yourself to the matter now, if Carr will be making the obeisance in four sun-circuits' time?" 

"You cannot require that of him," his mother said quickly as she took a glass of cider from Variel's tray. 

"No," said Uncle Geoffrey, "I will not require that of him." The change of verb made his mother shift uneasily. "The high law does not require the obeisance by offspring of a High Master, or their spouses, which is why I do not require it of you or your husband. And because I have chosen Carr as my heir, I will not require it of him. But it seems not to have occurred to you, Daisy, that what you want is not necessarily what your son wants." 

At this most terrible of moments – when his mother opened her mouth to start the conversation that Carr had been staving off for two tri-years – Carr's father appeared at the mansion's front door, like one of the rescuing messengers that the goddess Mercy sent. "Geoffrey!" he said with surprise, but also, Carr noted with relief, with pleasure. "I had not expected to host you so soon again after the High Masters' council this season. What brings you home like this? Variel— Ah, I see that you already have a drink." 

"Thanks to your remarkably efficient valet, I do." Still not looking Variel's way, Uncle Geoffrey set his half-drunk cider on the servant's tray. "How are you, Benjamin? Is work treating you well? You look tired." 

Carr's father rubbed his face as Variel, setting the tray aside, hurried over to take his coat. "I am, rather. —No, Variel, by all that is sacred, I know how to take off my own coat. —I've been up to all hours with this latest problem at the office – you've heard of it, I suppose? And we've been having arguments with Rudd over Third Landstead matters again. _And_ the ice-house refrigeration has chosen this moment to threaten to break down. It's like trying to juggle three balls at once." 

"Well," said Uncle Geoffrey, taking up his cigar again, "in such cases, usually the best solution is to give away one of the balls." 

There was a small silence as Carr's mother frowned with lack of comprehension. Variel – having backed away rapidly when Carr's father batted away his helpful hands – turned to whisper something to Cook, who had emerged from the kitchen. Then Carr's father said, "I'm very glad, Geoffrey, that my business is not under your direct supervision. You must drive your lesser masters mad by tacking straight in front of their bow like that." 

Uncle Geoffrey turned to tap his cigar over the ashtray. "I only do it to my opponents, actually." 

Carr's mother laughed. "Well, thank goodness that we don't fall into that category." 

There was a small, awful silence. Uncle Geoffrey had turned back and was looking Carr's father straight in the eye. Even Carr's mother seemed to sense that all was not well; she looked uneasily between her older brother and her husband, whose expression had turned hard as a fossil. 

It was Uncle Geoffrey who broke the silence by saying, "But I am being rude by ignoring your guest. I assume that this is your guest, Daisy?" He smiled at his sister. 

"He is mine," Carr inserted, grateful for the change in conversation, though it merely meant that the inevitable had been delayed until a moment when his mother was not in the room. "May I present Comrade Jesse of Tenarus, my guest-friend? Jesse, this is my uncle, Geoffrey Gray, High Master of the Second Landstead." 

"How do you do, sir?" Following some sort of balance between politeness and lack of subservience that had been measured only by himself, Jesse offered his arm. "I've heard a good deal about you since my arrival in the Dozen Landsteads." 

"Indeed?" Unlike Rowlett, Uncle Geoffrey did not hesitate to respond to the well-meant though immensely incorrect greeting of the foreigner; he reached out and shook Jesse's arm. "Not all of it ill, I hope." 

Jesse smiled. "No more ill words than good ones, I'd say." 

Uncle Geoffrey chuckled. "Honest lad. Well, I'm sorry to report that, by the standards of the Dozen Landstead, that makes me one of the more popular High Masters. —Ah, is dinner ready?" he asked, responding to Cook's futile attempts to signal Carr's mother. "Daisy, I forgot that you dine so early. I'd be glad to amuse myself in your husband's library until he is ready to—" 

"No, no," Carr's father interrupted. "Not at all, Geoffrey. You are welcome to join us. I'm sure that we have enough made to host another guest." 

"And if not, I can stir something together," his mother added brightly. 

Cook gave a barely suppressed sigh. Jesse, standing behind the backs of Carr's parents, rolled his eyes. Uncle Geoffrey, catching sight of that, gave another of his little, ironic smiles. "I would not think of imposing on you in that manner, Daisy. Believe me, at my age, I should be eating less." He patted his stomach. "One serving will do for me, if the meal can be stretched that far." He directed his gaze at Cook rather than his sister as he spoke. Cook gave a nod as Carr's parents, without looking her way, insisted that it could. "Excellent!" said Uncle Geoffrey, stubbing out his cigar. "More than the food, I look forward to the conversation. In this household, the discussions are always entertaining." And with the ironic smile still on his face, the High Master walked toward the door leading to the Death Wing. 

o—o—o

Dinner was held in the formal dining room, of course. Variel served both of the older men. Uncle Geoffrey had left down at the dock, not only his boat and water-chauffeur, but also his valet and secretary and the other personal servants who invariably accompanied him, as well as his favorite liegeman. This was partly as a treat to the liegeman: he and most of the servants had once been watermen, working at this very dock, back in the days when Geoffrey Gray, as heir to the landstead, had run the House of His Master's Kindness, the Second Landstead's heirship House. 

Partly, though, it was tact. Uncle Geoffrey's servants – as well as his liegeman – had a tendency to kneel to their master at every slight opportunity. This inevitably resulted in awkward moments in the House of His Master's Kindness, which was now run by an Egalitarian master and mastress. 

Thankfully, the early conversation that evening did not enter into politics. Instead, everyone discussed their favorite dishes from around the Dozen Landsteads: planked shad, cold smoked menhaden, Ammippian fry-bread, fox-grape jelly, black mulberry pie, servants' muskrat pie and baked opossum with sweet potatoes, oyster "torch-bearers," which Carr's mother confessed with a laugh she had once sampled as a girl, not realizing they were made with dark rum. . . . 

"And then, of course," said Uncle Geoffrey, pushing back his empty dessert dish, "there are foreign meals. I understand that, amidst 'space beverages' and 'freeze-dried cubes' and other monstrosities, some very fine gelatin 'refrigerator cakes' are made in the First Landstead – no cooking required." 

"You call the First Landstead a foreign country?" From the far end of the table, Jesse looked up from where he was playing soldier with his silverware. He had contributed little to the conversation about food, saying only that he knew nothing of fine dining. From the smells that emanated from the dependency on the days that Jesse helped in cooking the servants' meals, Carr guessed that Jesse had a narrow definition of "fine dining." 

Uncle Geoffrey peered at Jesse over the rim of his wine glass. "The First Landstead – as it chooses to term itself – _is_ a foreign country. It was Yclau's First District for many tri-centuries. It has only recently broken away from the Queendom of Yclau, and it retains all the foreign elements of that nation: pollution that spills into our portion of the Bay and kills the seafood, nuclear scientists who plot new ways in which to destroy mankind, technologies that make men's minds turn to thoughts of machinery, rather than to thoughts of transformation . . ." 

"Which is just as likely to occur with the limited technology of the upper landsteads," Carr's father countered. He was sitting relaxed in his chair, framed by the mantelpiece that was flanked by two alcoves topped with ornamental scallop-shells. "Be fair, Geoffrey. Spiritual demise comes from human hearts, not computers. Indeed, we use mechanical calculators in the Bureau of Employment . . . though I'd far rather we used computers. They can handle more complex calculation of statistics." 

Uncle Geoffrey gave him a steady gaze. "The use of computers in the Dozen Landsteads violates the Embargo Act of 1912." 

"But it need not. If it deals only with numbers, a computer is nothing more than a sophisticated calculator. Calculators were invented before 1912; their use in the Dozen Landsteads has not been banned by the High Masters. Indeed, I believe that the first calculator is quite old, isn't it?" He appealed to Carr. 

"I think so," replied Carr. He disliked it when his father turned to him like this, to support a point he was making against his brother-in-law, but this seemed a relatively safe subject. "I recall one of my school masters saying that Master Blaise invented a mechanical calculator in the seventeenth tri-century. Master Fowler, who immigrated here from one of the Yclau colonies, built the first balanced ternary calculator in 1840; his invention is the reason that all the world's calculators and computers use a base three system. And a couple of weeks ago, while I was working at the border, I met a university professor from High Mistress Mary's College in the First Landstead. He told me that a computer he was working on was designed to assist with the calculation and storage of government statistics. I could probably track him down if you wish, sir." He addressed this remark to his uncle. 

"Hmm." His uncle stroked his chin. "Possibly, possibly. It would depend on whether safeguards could be built into the machine to prevent it from being used for illicit purposes. I do recognize that your clerks are weighted down with statistical calculations, Benjamin." 

This was a generous concession, and Carr's father acknowledged it with the slight bob of the head that was the closest he ever came to bowing to the High Master. 

"Well!" Setting aside her napkin, Carr's mother rose. The moist air of the evening Bay breeze had mussed the bun on her head, so that stray bits of hair trailed down her neck, making her look like a schoolgirl. "When the conversation turns to mathematics and machines, I know it's time to let the men talk. I'll be in the sitting room if anyone needs me." 

This was a generous concession too; Carr knew that his mother wanted nothing better than to follow the entire conversation, but her brother disliked womanly incursions into political discussions, and so she contented herself with listening to the detailed account that her husband would invariably supply her with afterwards. 

All of the men at the table had risen when she did, except for Jesse, who seemed to be puzzling out the meaning of this ritual. Carr's father – who had retained only such aspects of traditional male behavior toward women as would honor his wife – went to the door and held it open for her. They smiled at each other as she left. 

"She grows sweeter every year," Uncle Geoffrey commented as the men reseated themselves. "Benjamin, I know that you prefer a quiet mansion, but you really ought to have guests over more often, for Daisy's sake. In my day, Daisy was the belle of every ball held here." 

Carr's father raised his hands in a helpless manner. "Geoffrey, I've encouraged her to bring people here and to visit others, but the number of snubs she receives . . . It will be easier, once there are more of our kind in this landstead." 

Uncle Geoffrey, who had selective hearing when he chose not to pursue a particular battle, waved his hand toward the serving table, where the emptied dishes had been placed. "That was a very fine fricassee, Benjamin. Honga River oysters, I take it?" 

Carr checked his pocket-watch. Less than a tri-minute since his mother left the room. His uncle was wasting no time. 

"I don't follow you." His father's voice was stiff. 

"Carr? I understand you were there." As Carr had dreaded might happen, his uncle turned to him. A furrow appeared in his father's brow. At the end of the table, Jesse's eyes glinted with amusement. 

Carr took a deep breath. "Father, when Jesse and I were landing at Hickory Cove, the Oyster Navy gave chase to a Western Shore fleet. . . . It looked as though it might be our fleet." That was as far as he felt he could go. 

"It was most certainly your fleet." Apparently satisfied, the High Master turned his attention back to Carr's father. "I overheard your watermen bragging about the raid to my servants tonight. Benjamin, this is the fourth time this season . . . and goodness only knows how many times you have stolen Third Landstead oysters for over three tri-years. This must stop. You are making me the laughing stock of the High Masters' Council." 

Carr's father, who had not budged his gaze from the High Master, drummed his fingers on the tablecloth. "Let us say – for the sake of argument – that it was this House's fleet. Geoffrey, you know as well as I do how unfair the fishing laws are. The laws say that fleets must stay within the boundaries of the rivers and the Bay sections of their landsteads. But it's the Third Landstead's tongers who suffer most from these laws. Tonging can only be done in the rivers and in the shallows near the Bay coast; the tongs aren't long enough to reach into the deeper parts of the Bay. If you would withdraw the Oyster Navy from the Bay and allow our dredging ships to harvest oysters from any part of the Bay, we'd have no need to enter into tongers' territory—" 

"Benjamin." His uncle's voice was quietly firm. "The place for such arguments is at the council. As regent to Carr, you have a voice there; you can argue in favor of a change to the laws. What you _cannot_ do is continue to flagrantly defy the laws with your fleet. I have been exceedingly patient with you, Benjamin, but you are stealing oysters from the mouths of the Third Landstead's servants—" 

"Servants!" Now Carr's father was on his feet. "You dare to speak to me of the welfare of servants? After you and all the other High Masters have refused these many tri-decades to permit the use of labor-saving technology that could free up the servants to more creative tasks? After you repealed the Act of Celadon and Brun, which allowed servants to rise to the ranks they deserved?" 

"You had a voice in that discussion as well." Uncle Geoffrey remained in his seat, unmoved. "It is thanks to you that the Abuse of Power Act was passed at the same time that the Act of Celadon and Brun was repealed. Traditionalists, Reformed Traditionalists . . . we all agree with you that the welfare of the servants must be taken into account—" 

"And how many servants were raped over the tri-centuries before I finally persuaded you to outlaw such behavior?" The voice of Carr's father had turned harsh. "How many liegemen were treated as though they were mere menial workers? How many servants are forced to remain menial workers, because you refuse to concede that all men and women are born equal, and that their transformation occurs after birth, as they seek for themselves their destinies? If you would allow simple changes, such as the use of robots to assist the hard-working servants—" 

"Technology has destroyed the cultures of the other Midcoast nations!" Now Uncle Geoffrey's voice was rising too; his hand was clutching his napkin. "Thanks to advanced technology, the environment of the First Landstead has become little better than a pigsty. This is not the sort of world I will permit to be passed on to my heir—" 

"Your heir!" screamed Carr's father. The servants, who had been staying very still since this battle began, edged slightly away. "Your heir used to read scientifiction under the bed covers when he was a boy! You know nothing about the needs of the people you rule; you know nothing about your own heir—!" 

"Please." 

His word, barely more than a whisper, transformed the scene. The servants let out their breaths softly. His father and uncle turned to look at him immediately. Jesse, who had been using pencil and napkin to keep score of the points made, started a third column with Carr's name on it. 

Carr turned his head to look at all of them. "Please," he said softly. "Master . . . Father . . . I would very much appreciate it if you would not involve me in your quarrels." 

After a moment, his uncle nodded. "Well spoken, nephew. You are not a weapon for us to use in battle. —Benjamin." Uncle Geoffrey turned his attention to Carr's father, who had passed to the stage where he was white-faced and shaking. "You told me long ago that you could not tolerate being issued flat orders, liege-master to liegeman, but that you would always listen with deep consideration if I spoke to you man-to-man. Very well; I have always done so, which is the reason why this dispute over your fleet's actions has lasted as long as it has. But there is no reason why such manly discussions should take the form of shouting. We are civilized men; we can discuss this in a civilized manner." 

Carr's estimate of his uncle's generosity rose to a peak. His father, though, was in no condition to accept the gift. As was always the case after his rages, his eyes had turned glazed. He said in a trembling voice, "I cannot speak to you further. I cannot." And without waiting for permission, or even making his intentions clear, he left the room. 

Carr's mother, who must have heard the shouting, made a plaintive enquiry in the hallway. There was no response except the sound of feet running, first down the hallway, and then up the stairs. Soon a door slammed upstairs. Softer footsteps followed: Carr's mother, going to comfort her husband, as she always did in the hours after his red rages drained him. 

Carr's uncle, who had never fully grasped the sad pattern of these changes of mood, was frowning now. Carr thought, with deepening disquiet, that the consequences of this evening's conversation were likely to be even graver than he had feared. 

o—o—o

There was a long silence after Carr's father left, punctuated only by the soft rattle of dinnerware in the corner of the room, where Variel and Bat were preparing the after-dinner coffee; Carr's parents were teetotallers in deference to Carr's mother's family, who were Traditionalists. Then Jesse said, "As long as we're going to be killing each other over politics . . ." 

Carr, who had just been given a cup by Bat, choked on his coffee. Uncle Geoffrey merely looked amused. "You have something to add on this subject?" 

"Nah, just questions. I mean, you've been tossing around a lot of terms tonight that I'm unfamiliar with: Traditionalist, Reformed Traditionalist, Egalitarian. . . ." 

Uncle Geoffrey raised his eyebrows as he picked up the cup of coffee that Variel had just set down. "I had assumed that you were an Egalitarian. Haven't you adopted the title of Comrade Jesse?" 

"Yeah, it sounds friendly," Jesse replied cheerfully. "Comrade, friend, mate . . ." 

Uncle Geoffrey snorted with amusement. "I see. Well, then, I suppose I should ask: Are you a believer in rebirth?" 

"Reincarnation, you mean?" Leaning back in his chair, Jesse shrugged. "I was raised to believe in gods, the final battle for victory – that sort of thing. I don't really give religious stuff much thought. Theology bores me." 

"Well, then," said Uncle Geoffrey settling his cup carefully onto his saucer, "it may be somewhat difficult for me to answer your question. You see, the political parties in the Dozen Landsteads are based on doctrinal divisions between the believers in rebirth." 

"Yeah?" Jesse leaned forward and placed his chin on his fists, a gesture that Carr had come to associate with: "Jesse in readiness to tear your theories apart." 

"Yes," replied Uncle Geoffrey. If he had recognized that Jesse had taken a battle stance – which, being Uncle Geoffrey, he undoubtedly had – he was preferring to leave the matter unacknowledged for the moment. "Here is the common ground that all believers in rebirth share: We believe that there is meaning to our lives. We believe that our lives reflect what we have done in our previous lives – that our states of being are not simply arbitrary. We believe that if we do good in this life, we will be reborn as a person whose character reflects the improvements we made to our character in our previous life. If we fail to act in a morally upright manner, our rebirth will be delayed or, in extreme cases, not permitted. We will be trapped in the changeless world of afterdeath." 

"Huh" was Jesse's uninformative commentary on this. "So what do you disagree about?" 

Uncle Geoffrey began to speak, stopped, and began again. "Let me start with the most traditional form of belief in rebirth, which, quite logically, calls itself Traditionalism. We Traditionalists believe that all men are reborn into ranks that reflect our past deeds. If we were servants in the past and were obedient to our masters, then we may have risen in rank to become a lesser master. A lesser master may be reborn to a higher master-rank until he is finally reborn to the highest birth-rank: heir to the High Master. In all cases, this rise in rank requires that the master carry out his duties with the utmost faithfulness. If he does not, he will risk being lowered in rank in his next life." 

"Uh-huh," replied Jesse. "So if you do really good, what are _you_ going to become after you die? A Higher Master?" 

Uncle Geoffrey smiled into his coffee cup. "I do not know. And I do not speculate upon such matters. That is the mark of a Traditionalist, you see: we dislike speculating on the details of the doctrine of rebirth. In particular, we consider it to be spiritually dangerous to speculate on whether a particular person is a reincarnation of a historical figure. If I were to say that I was the rebirth of the first-tri-century master who collected the sayings of Remigeus and turned them into law, I would be showing pride that could lead to the lowering of my moral worth, and therefore to the lowering of rank in my next life. If I were to say that someone else was the rebirth of that master . . . Well, then I would be merely foolish. It is impossible to know such things, and is therefore a distraction to the real business in our lives, which is to improve our moral worth so that we can rise in rank and honor in our next life. —Do you have any questions so far?" 

Jesse's eyes were narrowed by now, but all that he said was, "Yeah. Who's Remigeus?" 

Carr choked on his coffee for a second time. Jesse patted him helpfully on the back. Sounding less amused than before, Uncle Geoffrey said, "He is the founder of our spiritual and constitutional system. He is said to have been the first man who was reborn. He is undoubtedly the man whose sayings form the constitutional foundation for the Dozen Landsteads – and originally Yclau as well, although that queendom has sadly strayed from its roots. In the Dozen Landsteads, no act can be passed that is fundamentally opposed to the principles laid down by Remigeus. Over and over, his sayings have proved their worth to new generations of Landsteaders." 

Jesse nodded. "And the Landsteaders who aren't Traditionalists? They believe this too?" 

"Oh, most certainly. That is a common ground for all Landsteaders, though we frequently disagree on the application of this belief. But let me continue. The second of the three doctrinal parties consists of the Reformed Traditionalists. Like the Traditionalists, they believe that men are born into ranks that reflect our past lives. And like the Traditionalists, they believe that it is wrong to speculate on one's personal previous lives. Unlike the Traditionalists, however, they believe that it is legitimate to state that someone other than oneself is the reborn soul of a person who lived in the past. In particular, they believe that the great founder of our laws, Remigeus, was reborn as a High Master named Celadon." 

"Yeah?" Jesse tapped his fingers on the table with his "Finally we've gotten to the point" gesture. "Now, this Celadon guy I've heard of. He was the one that the Act of Celadon and Brun was named after, right? He believed that masters could become slaves, and slaves could become masters." 

"Yes," said Uncle Geoffrey, keeping his eyes fixed on Jesse as Variel poured him more coffee. "Though it would be more precise to say that he believed that a slave could become a master _in a single lifetime._ We all agree, you see, that men can change ranks once they have been reborn. The Reformed Traditionalists, though, state that Celadon was correct in believing that it is proper for us fallible humans to determine when a man has risen in worth and therefore deserves the title of master. They believe this because, speculating on matters where Traditionalists are silent, they have decided that Celadon was Remigeus reborn, and therefore Celadon's sayings are part of the constitutional basis of the Dozen Landstead's laws." 

"Ooooh-kay," said Jesse. "I'm beginning to see where the politics come in. And the Traditionalists don't think that Celadon was Remigeus, so they say, 'Stuff his ideas.'" 

Frowning, Uncle Geoffrey said, "If I follow your idiom correctly, then yes: We Traditionalists do not believe that it is possible to know whether Celadon was Remigeus. In theory, it is possible to be a Traditionalist and still support the Act of Celadon and Brun, not because the act is constitutionally required, but because it is a sound act. But in fact I know of no Traditionalist who supports the Act of Celadon and Brun. From the Traditionalist point of view, fallible humans do not have the right to determine whether a man should be a master or a slave – or rather, since the slaves were long ago emancipated, a master or a servant. That decision of whether a man should be a master or servant ought to be made by whatever power it is that determines what rank we are born into. Therefore, Traditionalists – I am speaking now of the political party – oppose the rising in rank from a servant to a master within a single lifetime. We do allow masters to rise in rank during a single lifetime, and a servant may, by judicious effort, rise in status within his House. But that is as far as we consider it correct for humans to meddle in. We consider it to be overweening pride for the courts to declare, 'This man, who was reborn as a servant, is actually a master.'" 

Jesse was smiling now, looking more delighted than he ever had when talking with Carr's parents. "Right. So you're against pride and idle speculation, while the Reformed Traditionalists like to meddle in matters where they shouldn't. What about the Egalitarians?" 

"They are – if you will forgive me for using such a deprecatory phrase in this House – the radicals." Uncle Geoffrey set his cup aside, and Variel unobtrusively retrieved it. "They hold to extremes that neither of the other parties will tolerate." 

Jesse snorted. "You guys are sure dabbling in conservatism if you think the Egalitarians are radicals. But okay, they're the ones that everyone hates, I guess. Why?" 

"We _disagree_ with the Egalitarians," Uncle Geoffrey said carefully, "because they do not believe in rebirth in any sense in which that doctrine has been understood for twenty tri-centuries. The Egalitarians say that rebirth is merely a metaphor for the spiritual changes that a person undergoes in a single lifetime. This being the case, they refuse to link rank with rebirth; they say that we are all born equals, and that our rebirth is reflected purely by how we live our lives." 

Uncle Geoffrey took up his cigar again. Variel, his hands filled with the coffee pitcher, was caught off-guard, but Bat, always quick in these matters, stepped forward from where he was standing against the wall, struck a match, and lit the cigar. Uncle Geoffrey sucked in the smoke without turning his head. Bat retreated to the wall. Uncle Geoffrey continued, "If I may put this in purely regional and chronological terms, all Landsteaders and Yclau were Traditionalists until the fourteenth tri-century. By the end of the fourteenth tri-century, the belief that Celadon was Remigeus reborn had spread so far that half the Landsteaders and nearly all the Yclau were Reformed Traditionalists. As for the Egalitarian movement, that began in Yclau in the early twentieth tri-century, largely due to certain metaphorical passages in the writings of the first High Seeker of the Eternal Dungeon – though he himself was a Reformed Traditionalist, it should be noted. Egalitarianism spread rapidly in Yclau, because it fit with certain social changes that were already taking place in that queendom – namely, the breakdown of our traditional system of masters being duty-bound to care for their servants. This breakdown has led, over time, to horrendous exploitations by Yclau employers of their employees. Alas, the Egalitarian system worked its pernicious way back to the Dozen Landsteads by way of the First Landstead. That was one of the reasons that the Embargo Act of 1912 was passed: to prevent foreign heresies from having a destructive influence on our land again. However, because the act was not retroactive, Egalitarianism remains legal. Most Yclau today are Egalitarian, and many First Landsteaders are, but Egalitarians remain very much a minority in the upper landsteads. The Egalitarians' beliefs, both spiritual and political, are an attack on the fundamental belief systems of most Landsteaders. —Have I put you to sleep yet?" Uncle Geoffrey smiled at Jesse. 

Jesse laughed, handing his cup to Bat with a word of thanks. "Nope, your tale got more interesting toward the end." 

"I assume, then, that you would classify yourself as an Egalitarian?" said Uncle Geoffrey, speaking around the cigar in his mouth. 

"Me? No way. I'm an Abolitionist." 

China crashed to the ground and shattered; Bat had dropped Jesse's cup. Murmuring apologies, he dropped to his knees, red-faced. Variel hurried forward to help him collect the pieces. Carr felt his own face turn flushed. 

By contrast, Uncle Geoffrey did not so much as bat an eyelid. "Indeed? I had heard that slavery is still legal in some nations overseas – a sorry state of affairs. The House of His Master's Kindness, as it happens, is descended directly from Master Fernao, the sixteenth-tri-century High Master who first proposed the abolition of slavery in the Dozen Landsteads. That is one of my family's legacies that I am most proud of: that servants are no longer required to work for employers who treat them with undue harshness. They can move on to work for morally upright employers." 

"Uh-_huh."_ Jesse's skepticism came through clearly. "Variel, how many Houses have you worked for?" 

Variel flicked a glance over at Uncle Geoffrey, who nodded his permission for Variel to speak. The valet replied, "Only this one, sir." 

"Other than Bat and Sally, are there _any_ servants here who have worked for another House?" Jesse persisted. 

"No, sir." Variel's voice remained utterly colorless. 

"Odd, don't you think?" Jesse smiled at Uncle Geoffrey. "But hey, the servants here must just love their master and mastress." 

"Perhaps," said Uncle Geoffrey quietly. "Or perhaps a man who comes from a society with no masters or servants may underestimate the bonds of loyalty that a good servant will show toward an imperfect master and mastress." 

Jesse grimaced. "Ouch. Fair enough. You're saying, 'Shut up till you know more about what you're blabbing about.'" 

"Something along those lines. Mind you," Uncle Geoffrey added as he moved to rise, "when you reach the point of proper knowledgeableness and maturity, I expect that your opinions will be well worth listening to. —Ah, thank you, Carr." This was as Carr hurried behind him to pull back his chair. "Comrade Jesse, if you should ever need to learn more about the topic of the bonds of allegiance, I suggest that you consult with my nephew. I can think of no one else who has such fine instincts on that matter – though he is, I regret to say, a Reformed Traditionalist." 

Carr stepped back and waited until Variel had helped Uncle Geoffrey don his coat before he met his uncle's eyes. "With respect, master, I'm an Egalitarian, as my parents are." 

Uncle Geoffrey smiled at Carr as Variel handed him his hat and gloves. "Yes, of course. My mistake. Well, Carr, it has been a delight to see you again, and to meet your guest-friend. As for your father . . . Tell him, please, that we will continue our discussion. At my House. Tomorrow evening at eight." 

Carr lowered his eyes, as though he were the one taking the rebuke, not his father. "Yes, High Master." He thought of going down onto his knee again, but the servants were watching, and Uncle Geoffrey had already turned away. The High Master left the dining room without another word, accompanied by Variel. 

"Summoned to the principal's office," remarked Jesse. "Nasty." Carr looked at him quizzically, and Jesse laughed. "Forget it. Look, can we talk?" 

Carr refrained from pointing out that they were already doing so; he too was achingly conscious of Bat's presence. "Let's go outside," he suggested. "I'm tired, but I can survive a walk. 'My strength has waned, yet I will fight on for the sake of others.'" 

"That sounds like a quotation," said Jesse as he steered Carr toward the door with an arm around Carr's shoulders. "Who said that?" 

"Do you really have to ask?" 

Jesse laughed. "I guess not. Master Remigeus again." 

"No," replied Carr. "Slave Remigeus." And he smiled at Jesse's consternation.


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER SIX**

"You been holding out on me, kid." 

Carr did not pretend to misunderstand, but neither did he look at Jesse as the two of them made their way onto the bridge that Carr's great-great-grandfather had built over Gray's Creek, a creek which ran through the valley that lay to the north of the hill on which Cliffsdale Mansion stood. "I thought someone would have told you." 

"That you were heir to this entire fucking landstead? Nah, I guess they figured I already knew. I did gather that your uncle was some sort of local bigwig, but damn, High Master? What are you doing, spending your days in work clothes and hiding away in a mansion that nobody ever visits? You ought to be out schmoozing with the cream of the landstead." 

After a minute, largely spent deciphering Jesse's suggestion, Carr said, "I do a certain amount of that when I'm at school, or when I'm visiting my uncle. My parents live retired lives." 

"Yeah, I got that." Jesse paused to survey the scene. The morning mist had lingered all day, as it often did in the marshland through which Gray's Creek travelled. Bullfrogs croaked morosely, while over the marsh waters travelled the yet more morose sound of a foghorn from the nearby lamphouse. "So your uncle doesn't have any kids of his own—" 

"He's not married." 

"—and I'm guessing that has something to do with this liegeman of his that he kept chatting about at supper." Seeing Carr's mildly inquisitive expression, Jesse laughed. "Your servants may have fallen down on the job of telling me your title, but they had quite a bit to say about what it means to give 'liegeman's service.'" 

"Oh, I see." Carr looked up to watch a white egret soar over the water, soft as a cloud; the egret landed with a flutter and a splash, then immediately stilled, its eyes on the water, its neck outstretched. "Well, the answer to your question is, Yes. My uncle shares his bed with Ernest. Ernest is very devoted to him, and my uncle feels a great deal of affection for him." 

"So is your uncle going to expect you to be 'very devoted to him'?" 

Carr stared in disbelief at his guest. "Jesse, that's incest!" 

Jesse shrugged. "Different nations have different customs. And some masters I've known wouldn't be stopped by taboo. I guess the answer is no?" 

"Of course it's no! By all that's sacred, Jesse . . ." He threw a pebble into the creek. It landed with a plop, causing minnows to scatter. The egret glanced his way, then returned to its vigil. "Sometimes I think your greatest joy in life is riling up other people." 

"Part of the job description, yeah." Jesse grinned at him. "So, okay, your uncle's interest in you is entirely chaste. Why you, then? I mean, shouldn't your father be heir, since he's closest kin? Assuming that your mother isn't considered closest kin, which I'm sort of guessing she isn't, in this 'male dog's on top' world." 

"Ah, no." Carr looked for another pebble to throw; it seemed the best outlet for his frustration. "Patrilineal succession was established in the high law at the end of the twelfth tri-century. It was what caused the First Landstead to break away from the upper landsteads: an eldest daughter claimed to be High Master – that's how she expressed it – and her younger brother disputed her claim. The people of the First Landstead backed her claim, so the younger brother ended up fleeing to the upper landsteads in quest of support from the other High Masters. They passed a law that confirmed him as High Master . . . but the people of the First Landstead still wouldn't accept his claim. Instead, they broke away from the Alliance of the Dozen Landsteads." 

He had hoped that this dry recital of historical events would bore Jesse into changing the subject, but the young man was as dogged as usual in pursuing awkward topics. "So your father should be the High Master's heir, right?" 

Carr turned and began making his way across the creek. The egret thrust out its beak suddenly, plunging it into the water. A moment later, a fish was struggling in its beak. The egret swallowed it with a single gulp. "My father doesn't want to be High Master." 

"And you do?" said Jesse over Carr's shoulder. 

"It's . . . harder for my father than for me. His conscience is very strict. When he was young, he even considered asking that his rank be lowered to servant. We had that law back then, the Act of Celadon and Brun, which allowed masters and servants to request a change in rank." 

"That's why Rowlett is a master, even though he speaks like a servant?" 

"That's why," Carr confirmed. "My father raised him in rank when he took over this House. The Act of Celadon and Brun was repealed around the time I was born, but in any case, my father had decided that he could do more for the servants if he remained ranked as a master." 

"Yeah?" said Jesse, sounding mildly curious. "Does that have anything to do with this?" 

Still only halfway across the bridge, Carr turned round to see Jesse holding up a book. Carr stared at the familiar blue binding. "Where did you get that?" 

"From your room. I was going to ask you about it this afternoon, but we got distracted into that discussion of oyster shucking." Jesse flipped through the pages. "Pretty hefty tome. Looks like your father put a lot of work into it. Does anyone actually read it?" 

Carr took the book from him, turned – almost at random – to one of the sections he had memorized, and silently handed the book back to Jesse. Jesse read the passage. Then he turned the page. 

Ten pages later, Jesse said, "Okay, I'm impressed. He wrote all this himself?" 

"Yes. He's considered one of the finest political theorists in the Dozen Landsteads – and not just among the Egalitarians. His book has been translated and reprinted all over the world." 

"Nice to see that publishers occasionally have good taste." Jesse continued to flip through the book. "Damn. He has a mind for detail. And if this detail was put into action . . ." He paused, then read aloud, "'All of this assumes that a leader should be found who has the courage and determination to put this plan into action.'" Jesse looked up. "That leader is you?" 

Carr took the book back and slipped it into his jacket pocket. "For lack of anyone better. My father crafted the solutions; I'm the one who is to carry out the solutions. My father has a nine-tri-year plan for abolishing the master and service ranks in the Second Landstead. As soon as I become High Master, I'll start the plan in motion." 

Jesse raised his eyebrows. "Does your uncle know this?" 

"He has guessed, I think. We don't talk about it. I'm pretty sure he's hoping that, once I come to live with him, I'll be transformed and reborn onto the path of Traditionalism." Carr started walking again as the egret began to wade forward slowly, its head bobbing forth as it searched out new terrain for its hunting. "He didn't really have much choice where heirs are concerned. My uncle doesn't have any brothers. My mother's older sisters married outside the landstead; their husbands and sons are ineligible for the heirship. So the House of His Master's Kindness – the heirship House – had to go to my father or me." 

"Huh." Jesse turned his head to watch the egret. "Delicate family politics. No wonder things were a bit fiery at the dinner table tonight, even leaving aside the boat stuff. But you get along all right with your uncle?" 

"Oh, yes, quite well. He's a good High Master, you know – just very wedded to doing things the traditional way." 

They had reached the end of the bridge over Gray's Creek; Carr stepped onto the dirt path and turned back to see whether Jesse needed help, but Jesse had already jumped down. Mist and marsh grass hid what lay ahead as they walked down the dirt path that ran along the northern bank of the creek. The side of the hill to the north of Gray's Creek rose abruptly beside them, looming over the path. Spiders, carefully circling their prey, danced upon mist-sparkled webs, while water striders skated on the marsh-water, seeking fallen dragonflies. In a tree above, an osprey cried angrily at the young men's intrusion and then returned to feeding fish to the youngsters in her nest. 

"What I don't get," said Jesse, chewing on a waterhemp leaf, "is how your dad could write a book like that, and then run a business like— What the _fuck_?" 

The mouth of Gray's Creek was just barely wide enough to accommodate the airship's landing platform, which was built on stilts over the portion of the creek that was hidden behind the marsh grass. As the dirigible descended, Jesse broke out of his frozen posture and raced forward. The osprey, angry again, whistled piercingly. 

By the time Carr caught up with Jesse, the small airship had berthed, and the packing-house servants were bringing forth barrels from the nearby ice house. Carr gestured to one of the watermen, who quickly pried open a barrel for the young master's inspection. Carr waved forward Jesse, who stared down at the gallon-sized metal can surrounded by ice. After opening the can with his pocket-knife, Carr offered Jesse an oyster, then swallowed one himself. It wasn't bad, for a late-season oyster. Too late, he realized that it probably came from the Third Landstead. 

The waterman hovered anxiously beside him. "That all right, master?" he asked. 

"Nicely packed," Carr assured him. "Where is this shipment headed?" 

"To Vovim, sir. Them Vovimians, they like our oysters. Pay well for them." 

"I expect so." Carr stepped back and allowed the waterman to reseal the can and barrel. 

Beside him, Jesse said, "Vovim? That's one of the inland nations, isn't it?" 

Carr eyed him for a moment before saying, "It's located directly to the north of the Dozen Landsteads, though it spreads west, all the way past the chain of mountains that divides the Midcoast nations from the inland nations. The Vovimians are noted for their gourmet cooking." 

"And this is considered gourmet?" Having dropped his raw oyster to the ground, Jesse scrutinized the barrels with what appeared to be new respect. "Why don't the Vovimians do their own fishing?" 

"The Bay has the best oyster-fishing ground in the world. Only the Dozen Landsteads and Yclau border the Bay. —All right," he added to Rowlett, who was standing nearby, trying not to make his impatience obvious. "I know you're on a tight schedule. We're finished here." 

"Thank you, Master Carr." Rowlett tipped his cap, then roared at the other watermen, "Look to your work, men! It's near sunset!" 

Jesse looked as though he would have liked to spend all night examining the airship, but as the airship motors roared, Carr pulled him toward the beach. As they reached the rise in the path before the beach, the ground crew released the airship's lines, and the mighty ship floated upward, glinting silver against the sun. 

"Gods!" exclaimed Jesse as Carr held onto his hat to keep it from being swept away in the wind caused by the motors. "Do they have many of those air thingies here?" 

"In the Dozen Landsteads?" 

"No, in this world." 

Carr's silence must have alerted Jesse to the oddness of what he had said. Jesse tore his gaze away from the airship, which was disappearing north. "I meant in the New World. I've never seen any in the Old World." 

Carr began walking again. "The Dozen Landsteads invented the airship, the ocean steamship, and the train – well, the First Landstead did, actually, but they patented their inventions in the Dozen Landsteads and allowed our manufactories to build their inventions. At one time, the Dozen Landsteads had a virtual monopoly on long-distance travel. Now, of course, most of the world travels by transcontinental pneumatic shuttle or by overseas rockets. Only the upper landsteads continue to use the old methods of travel." 

He paused; they had reached within sight of the beach. 

The tide had turned. The waves were slipping back, revealing a multi-colored array of treasures: pink and blue oyster shells, tawny crab legs, glistening green seaweed, and most common of all, the grey-and-orange zebra stripes of layered sandstone-and-clay rocks that had been rounded by their time in the water. Jesse knelt beside one, picking it up, then glanced at the nearest cliff, which rose sharply from the beach. "This came from the cliffs?" 

"Yes. The cliffs have been eaten away by the Bay – I'm not sure why. Our house used to be much further away from Carruthers Cliffs than it is now." 

"Carruthers Cliffs?" Still holding the rock, Jesse stared up at him. "Why are the cliffs named after your dad's family? I mean, your uncle's family is the important one, right?" 

After half a minute, Jesse added with a grin, "I love it when you blush. Okay, give me the part you haven't revealed yet. Is your father's family rich or something?" 

"Not well off at all, actually." For something to do, Carr crouched down on the dry portion of the sand, where he had been standing. Taking a clamshell in hand, he began to scrape away at the sand. "We've lost a lot of money over the tri-centuries; my father was practically penniless when he married my mother. . . . We come from the First Landstead, originally." 

"How long ago is 'originally'?" asked Jesse, tossing the rock up and down in his hand. 

"Eight tri-centuries." 

Jesse thought about this; and then, as Carr had figured he would, he made the connection. "The younger brother of the female High Master in the First Landstead, the one who claimed he was really that landstead's High Master – he came to the upper landsteads in the 1100s." 

Carr nodded. Water seeped out of the hole he had dug and created a still pool, reflecting the setting sun. 

"Fuck, Carr!" Now Jesse was laughing. "First you don't tell me that you're heir to this landstead . . . and now you reveal that you're heir to _two_ landsteads?" 

"No," said Carr quickly. "My father released our family's claim on the First Landstead's High Mastership as soon as his own father died. He thought it was ridiculous for us to claim that title after all these tri-centuries. So do I. But we still have family, distant family, in the First Landstead—" 

"Their High Master." Jesse tilted his head to one side, considering. "So the First Landstead's government is friendly to you now?" 

"They're beginning to be, since my father dropped our claim. My father is hoping that the High Masters' council will eventually allow the First Landstead to join their council. Lots of First Landsteaders are Egalitarians—" 

"Allies. Gotcha." Jesse seemed to lose interest, staring down at the sand. "Predators?" 

"Excuse me?" Disconcerted, Carr rose and made his way over to where Jesse crouched. 

Jesse held up something grey. "This looks like it belonged to a predator." 

"Oh." Carr took the tooth carefully in hand. "Shark's tooth. Ancient," he added as Jesse hastily scanned the nearby waves. "It came from the cliffs. Here, I'll show you." 

He knelt down, took the striped rock from Jesse's other hand, examined it carefully, and used his penknife and another rock to hammer it open. Then he showed Jesse what lay within the cracked rock. "The imprint of scallop shells. Do you see those stripes on the rock and the cliffs? They're layers of ground laid down over the tri-centuries, as time passed. We have archaeologists visiting these cliffs every summer to search for fossils, or to look for evidence of old Ammippian settlements." 

"Ammippian?" Jesse continued to stare down at the arrow-shaped shark's tooth. "You had native tribes living here once? I thought they all lived in Mip. Ammippian – Mip – that nation is named after the natives, right?" He looked vaguely toward the eastward waters of the Bay, as though expecting to see either the Ammippians or Mip. 

After another thoughtful moment, Carr pointed him in the right direction: toward the northwest. "The Ammippians all live in the Magisterial Republic of Mip now, yes. But at one time, they were scattered throughout the Midcoast nations. They lived here in the Dozen Landsteads, and in Yclau, and in Vovim . . . We all drove them away from their land. Only the Mippites allowed the Ammippians to settle in their nation, and only on reservations." 

"Huh. Just like slaves." Jesse's eyes went blank for a moment, and Carr felt himself grow still. Then Jesse shook his head. "Nah. One problem at a time. What about the First Landstead? Do the First Landsteaders fish?" 

Carr stared at him, disconcerted by Jesse's rapid changes in topic. "Not any more. Why do you ask?" 

"Just curious. Why don't they fish there? Too busy building rockets?" As he spoke, Jesse rose to his feet, still holding the shark's tooth. With a few light bounds, he was standing on the wharf, which was now abandoned. The packing-house nearby lay quiet, all of its servants having gone home for their supper. Jesse strode forward quickly. 

Carr followed more slowly. He traced their conversation in his mind. All that he could figure out from it was that Jesse had a strong interest in the First Landstead. Carr thought again of the guidebook and wondered when Jesse would begin grilling him for information on Prison City. He knew very little about the First Landstead's model prison, other than the well-known fact that, by mutual agreement of their respective governments, Prison City housed the most notorious upper-landstead criminals – mainly servants, along with a few masters who had experienced the misfortune of incurring the wrath of their High Masters. The High Masters' council had agreed to send a select number of dangerous convicts there because the prison had a reputation for being unescapable. 

By the time Carr caught up with Jesse, the visitor was sitting on the end of the wharf, surrounded on both sides by gently bobbing skipjacks that were docked. Carr joined him. The water was stained red by the sun, which was sinking below the fog-fuzzed treeline behind them. Nearby, Cove Point Lamphouse continued to cry out its warning to boats on the water. The waves whispered against the wharf with the rhythm of a mother rocking her child. 

Jesse was silent a long while before saying, "I wish Quen could see this." 

"Quen?" Carr looked over at Jesse, who was staring unblinking into the mist. 

"Some guy I know." Jesse gathered his feet under him and rose. He stood a while more before saying, "I'm getting homesick." 

Before Carr could think of how to reply to this, Jesse added, "So why don't they fish?" 

Carr sighed. It was too peaceful a night for him to want to be playing hide-and-pursue with Jesse's quicksilver mind. Without rising, he said, "Pollution. Their factories pollute their waters. Some of the pollution is beginning to seep into the Second Landstead's portion of the Bay and kill the sealife. Our manufactories pollute the waters too, on a smaller scale. My father is angry about that. He wants the manufactories in all of the Dozen Landsteads to switch to a clean method of producing power." 

"What sort of method?" Tossing the shark's tooth up and down in his hand, Jesse stared across at him. 

"Nuclear power. That's what the First Landstead uses to provide energy to most of its homes." 

"Yeah?" The smile on Jesse's face turned bitter. "You know what, Carr? Your dad may just get his wish. Lucky for you Landsteaders, huh?" And with those cryptic words, Jesse rose to his feet and strode back to the beach. 

Carr stared after him, and then switched his attention back to the Bay. The mist was keeping most of the House's boats ashore; nothing lay in front of him but a pearl-grey mist and the softly swishing waters. 

Then, in a flicker shorter than the wink of an eyelid, something changed. 

After a glance over his shoulder, he stood up abruptly and turned around. There, where only trees should be, an image lingered before him, like an after-image from staring at the sun. Cylindrical towers, like silos, but much larger. A nuclear power station – he had seen pictures of them in the newspaper. A nuclear power station, creating waste that would poison the Bay shore for tri-centuries. . . . 

Then the image was gone, and his breath was caught in his throat. 

It was not the first occasion on which time had jumped for him. "Cycle forward" and "cycle back" they called it in the Dozen Landsteads: occasions on which the spiralling cycles of time touched each other. Always before now, though, the images had been of small, unimportant matters in Carr's life: an upcoming footer match, a forgotten memory from childhood. 

"Nuclear power," he murmured, half expecting to see the Bay-killing station return. Nothing lay behind on the shore, though, but the peaceful scene he had always known: the packing house, the ice house, the landing platform, the watermen's homes, and the mansion on the hill above. 

"Father," he murmured as he turned to look back at the Bay, "I may need to have another talk with you about our landstead's future." 

o—o—o

The sun had dipped behind the trees now. After several minutes, Carr let his gaze fall to the wharf. The tip of the wharf was cluttered with lines that led underwater. Idly, still thinking about future dangers, Carr stooped to haul up one of the crabbing pots that hung from the wharf. The wire-cage pots were an invention of one of the House's watermen, who had been inspired into creativity by imitation of their forward-thinking House master. Carr had not yet decided whether to tell his uncle that the Embargo Act of 1912 – which also covered native inventions – was being violated in such a small matter. 

He stopped just short of pulling the pot to the surface. Lured by the bait, a young sting-ray had trapped itself in the pot. Sting-rays did not take kindly to captivity; this one was furiously attacking the bars of the cage and would likely attack Carr if he touched it, perhaps fatally. Well, but sting-rays were good to eat, he'd heard somewhere; no doubt whatever waterman had placed his crabbing pot here, in hopes of supplementing his family's meals, would be grateful for even a dangerous catch like this one. Carr started to lower the pot. 

"Let it free." 

The sudden order, so close to his ear, nearly caused him to fall into the Bay. He twisted his neck. Jesse was crouched behind him. 

"What?" enquired Carr weakly. 

_"Let that creature free."_ Jesse's voice had turned passionate. He was staring at the sting-ray, turning round and round in its cage, desperately seeking a way out. Carr looked again at the sting-ray, seeing it with new eyes. Then he reached down and carefully opened the pot. The sting-ray flew out, zipping through the waves like a seagull in flight, its body rippling as it fled. For a moment, at least, it was a thing of beauty. 

"You know," said Carr, closing the pot and keeping his gaze on the water where the sting-ray had been, "that was a servant's supper." 

"Yeah." Jesse stood up. "Yeah, that was stupid of me. I mean, it's not like I'm a vegetarian. It's just . . ." 

"Yes." Carr let go of the pot and rose to his feet. "I thought you'd gone back to the mansion." 

"Did. Came back. Wanted to ask you: What happens to this?" 

"Pardon?" Carr peered narrow-eyed at Jesse's face; the sky was rapidly darkening. 

Jesse spread his arms. "All this. The House of His Master's Kindness. You'll be High Master some day, and you'll move away . . ." 

"Oh." Carr looked around. The mist was lingering, and the night was creeping in. A dark, foggy wharf was not a good place to be. He began to walk toward the beach, saying, "I've already moved half out; I only come back during vacations. And once I move in with my uncle, after university, I'll only make brief visits here. I'm going to ask my uncle to let my father continue as regent of the House when I become heir in my full right; it's not uncommon for an heirship House to have a regent, when the heir is away and he doesn't have an adult heir of his own. I think my uncle is half expecting that and will agree to the plan, since he thinks it's a temporary measure. What he doesn't know" – Carr lowered his voice as they reached the beach, though nobody was about – "is that, when my uncle dies, I plan to name my father as my heir." 

"Huh?" For once, Jesse looked startled. "What the fuck do you want to do that for?" 

Carr glanced back at the docked skipjacks, bobbing on the waves, and felt a momentary stab of sadness. Thanks to his seasickness, he'd never board one again. His father never did either, citing his business responsibilities for the reason he didn't go out on the fishing boats. It was a tradition in Carr's mother's family, though, that the head of the House should have a waterman's training, so that he could give orders to his watermen in a competent manner. His uncle had received that training, and had been disturbed when Carr abandoned his own training at an early age. But there was no changing the state of Carr's stomach. 

Carr turned his attention back to Jesse as both of them jumped lightly over the narrow mouth of Gray's Creek and headed across the beach to the stairway that ran parallel to the cliff under Cliffsdale Mansion. "When my uncle voted to repeal the Act of Celadon and Brun, it wasn't just because he adheres to Traditionalist ways. It was because the act contained a loophole: it provided the only way in which a High Master, once he'd taken his oath of office, could voluntarily resign his duties. He could declare himself a servant." 

Jesse snorted. "I guess the Dozen Landsteads isn't ready for a High Servant. So your uncle wanted to close that loophole?" 

"Yes. For some reason, he was afraid of the possibility of a High Master becoming Egalitarian and abandoning his duties." Carr's voice turned wry, and Jesse emitted a short laugh. They'd reached the stairway now; Carr swung himself easily onto it, ran up the first few steps, and then paused to look back at Jesse, who was proceeding more carefully up the mist-slickened stairs. 

"So you can't resign once you become High Master, so this landstead can never be entirely Egalitarian. Nice trick." Jesse sounded somewhat breathless now. His head was bowed, looking at the dark steps. 

Carr resumed his rapid pace, worrying about the blank cloak of the New Moon that was starting to hide the landscape. Above, the terrace lamps twinkled in the soft breeze; his parents must have ordered the servants to light the lamps, knowing that Carr and Jesse remained outside. Carr took heart from this, guessing that his father had recovered more quickly than usual from his melancholy. "Yes, but there's another loophole that my uncle forgot to close. A High Master can't resign from his office . . . but his heir can. Once I name my father as my heir, he intends to do the same thing that he did concerning his heirship to the First Landstead: renounce our family's claim on the title. He'll resign, I'll beget no sons to replace him, and once I'm dead, the cycle of High Mastership will be broken in this landstead. There will be no way, constitutionally, to replace me in the office of High Master. By then, we hope, the landstead will be truly Egalitarian, thanks to the other measures my father has planned." 

"And this House?" Jesse definitely sounded breathless. "What the hell happens to this House? You didn't answer my question, Carruthers." 

Carr frowned, looking back at Jesse. Carr had reached the terrace now, yet Jesse continued to laboriously walk up the stairs, his hands gripping tightly the bannisters that Carr's father had ordered added to the stairs, for the sake of his wife. "I thought that was obvious. Once my father has rejected the title of heir, he and my mother will leave the mansion. Oh, they'll remain within the House of His Master's Kindness, but they'll live in a small cottage that originally belonged to one of our tenant farmers, caring for the cottage themselves, without servants. The rest of the House – the mansion, land, packing house, fleet, and even the Bureau of Employment, which is contracted to this House – will all be handed over to the servants. That's why my father is so concerned about money. He wouldn't have taken the position at the Bureau of Employment, and he wouldn't be raiding Third Landstead oyster grounds, except that he wants to ensure that this House is on a firm economic footing when the servants take over." 

"Means justify the end, huh?" Jesse had paused midway up the stairs, which were now pitch-black. 

"Do you want me to bring a lamp down?" Carr leaned over the terrace railing. 

"Nah. I have good night vision. Just give me a minute. So that's your plan: Hand over the House to your father, he'll hand it over to the servants, and you'll be High Master without really being High Master, because you're Egalitarian?" 

"You don't sound as though you approve of the plan." Carr spoke softly. He was beginning to be concerned by Jesse's long pause on the steps. But even as Carr spoke, Jesse started to move again, as slowly as Rowlett did when climbing steps. 

"It's a clever theory. Problem with theories is, they have to be carried out by people." 

"And so?" Carr watched Jesse traverse the final steps; Carr's own muscles were locked, ready to spring into action if what he thought was happening turned to disaster. 

"And so you and your father are people. Think about it, Carruthers. Think about how the people in this plan don't match the plan. Ow!" This as Carr grabbed Jesse on the final step and pulled him onto the terrace. "What the fuck?" 

"Why didn't you tell me that heights make you dizzy?" Fear turned Carr's voice stern. 

Jesse shrugged, not looking at Carr. "It isn't usually this bad. Only when it's dark." 

Carr looked back at the skipjacks, swaying at the wharf. "Jesse," he said slowly, "you've been travelling to Solomons Island by boat every night. None of the fleet's boats have much of a railing. You must be getting dizzy every single night." 

Jesse shrugged again, but this time his shoulders squared. "Needs must. —I mean," he added as Carr stared blankly at him, "you do what you got to do. You going to think about what I just said, kid?" 

"Yes, of course." His response was mechanical; his gaze had returned to the boats. Perhaps, he thought, he had given up his waterman's training too quickly. He'd be seasick in a boat, certainly. But needs must. 

o—o—o

By the time the conversation stopped that evening in the kitchen, Carr had already begun to step back. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to interrupt." 

"No problem!" replied Jesse cheerfully, tossing back into Variel's hands the keepsake that the servant had been showing him: the watch that Carr's uncle had given Variel for faithful service, at the time that Variel chose to transfer his certificate of employment to Carr's father. "You're here for tea, right? Let's go into the next room." 

All of the servants were frozen in place, their usual nightly routine disrupted. Feeling equally disrupted – as though Jesse had witnessed him when he was about to step into a private bath – Carr followed the young foreigner into the back room, passing Sally, who was biting her lip in an uncertain manner. 

Jesse was already carrying a mug of coffee which, Carr could guess, he had poured for himself. They sat down at the small table, face to face, Jesse with his back to the fire. A moment later Variel – always ready to make split-second decisions in cases of crisis – appeared with Bat, whose arms were full of wood and kindling. 

"Need any help?" Jesse asked, looking over his shoulder. 

"No, thank you, Comrade Jesse," Variel responded carefully. 

Jesse shrugged and looked back. "I'm terrible at building fires anyway. Never quite got the hang of it. Ask my first employer." 

Carr refused to follow up on this tantalizing tease. He remained silent as Variel and Bat departed, during the wait that followed, and as Sally served the tea. On this night, she didn't bother to ask how he wanted his tea, and she glanced at Jesse when curtsying her departure. 

Jesse waited until she had left – shutting the door behind her, for the first time. Then he spent a moment scrutinizing Carr's expression before he commented, "I haven't seen such a guilty look on anyone's face since the last time I caught a master beating his servant nearly to death." 

Carr stared down at his tea cup, cradling the warmth in his hand. "I'm not sure . . . I've never been sure . . . I come here every night." 

"Yeah, I know; your servants told me. So?" Jesse tilted his chair back in a relaxed manner. 

"They're my parents' servants," Carr corrected swiftly. "And I've never been sure . . . Do you think they mind, serving me during their leisure hours?" 

"Only one way to find out. I'll be right back." 

Before Carr could stop him, Jesse had scooted into the kitchen. Carr sat rigid, listening to the voices, which were too quiet for him to hear. Someone laughed, and then Jesse returned, closing the door behind him. 

"It's okay," he said, slipping back into his seat. "They don't mind." 

"They probably only said that because they knew you were enquiring for me—" 

"Nah, they told me that a couple of days ago; I only went now to ask their permission to pass on what they'd said. They'd already told me that you were no trouble at all. All that you ever want, they said, is a fire, a cup of tea, and cookies. It's easy to prepare that." 

"Then why," said Carr, voicing the question that had been in his mind for tri-years, "do they wait every night till I get there, before preparing their service? They could have had the tea-water simmering, the fire built up . . . But they always wait till I'm there before preparing their service. Why?" 

Jesse cocked his head. Outlined as he was against the firelight, his expression was half-hidden. "You're not stupid, Carr. So you already know the answer to that, don't you?" 

Carr looked down again at his cup. Sparks of flame whirled reflectively in the slowly twirling tea. The cup was growing cooler. 

"You just notched up that guilty face by one hundred degrees," Jesse observed. "Relax. There's a lot worse things that a master can do than ask for a cup of tea each night, just for the fun of watching servants rush around to serve him. There was this girl I met last night . . . I don't mean a woman; she was a fifteen-year-old girl. Her master's son pressured her into sleeping with him. The worst part about it was that she thought she had to pretend she liked the rape, because she feared he'd persuade his parents to sell her certificate of employment. Of course, once his parents learned she was pregnant, they threw her out of their home, while their son stood by, pretending he had nothing to do with any of this. The Bureau of Employment wouldn't help her find a new position. When I met her, she was standing outside a brothel, trying to get up the courage to ask them to hire her, because the alternative was for her and the baby to starve on the streets. Mind if I have a cookie?" 

Jesse didn't bother to wait for a reply but snatched a cookie from Carr's plate. Carr made no move to stop him; instead, he said, "I'll talk to my father. Maybe he wasn't aware of her case—" 

"Oh, he was aware, all right. As I'm sure you've noticed, your dad has an ethical blank spot when it comes to what he calls 'immoral young women.' Mind you," Jesse added around munches of the cookie, "he's no sexist. He has a lot to say as well about immoral young men. Funny how he doesn't have anything to say about immoral older men." 

"If you're referring to him," Carr replied without heat, "he's never been immoral – not in that way. He's very much in love with my mother, and before he met her, he was too young to be visiting brothels. As for other masters . . . I think my father feels that their private lives are none of his business." 

"But the servants' private lives are? Awfully proprietary of him." Jesse licked crumbs off his fingers. 

"You don't understand." Carr's voice grated in his own ears. "You can't understand. Where you grew up, everyone is equal. But if you live in a nation where the population is divided into master and servant . . . It gets under your skin, it gets into the air you breathe. You try to think of servants as equal to yourself, but you can't fully believe that – not when you've been raised to think otherwise. You can only try, and fail, and try, and fail, and pray that someday you'll be able to break away from the mob and be independent of mind – to think of masters and servants the way they really are." 

"Yeah," said Jesse, polishing off the second cookie. "Yeah, we're not really talking about your father any more, are we?" 

Carr remained silent, his eyes lowered. Jesse rose from his place, rubbing his fingers on his trousers, which were as gaudy in color as his tunic had been. "Well, I'm off. Care to join me tonight?" 

Carr's gaze slowly rose. There was no smile on Jesse's face. After another moment, Carr said quietly, "No, thank you." 

"Just like your dad, right? You don't approve of immoral young men?" Jesse's sardonic grin was back in place. 

"What other men do is their own business," Carr said carefully. "But as for myself . . . Not that sort of immorality." 

"The opposite sort, huh? Enjoy your tea, Master Carruthers." Jesse left, slamming the door behind him. 

Carr stared down at his tea. He lifted his cup. The tea had gone cold. He put the cup back down and stared at it as the fire in front of him died away.


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

Spring Transformation gave way to Spring Rebirth, which was followed by Spring Childhood. As the weeks passed, the weather grew pleasantly warm. Rumors arose among the watermen that the blue crabs – the primary summertime harvest in the Bay – had been sighted off Smith Island, the southernmost isle of the upper landsteads. But Comrade Carruthers kept most of his fleet at home, using the slow spring days as a time to complete repairs on worn ships. The cold months of the year meant ice-storms stripping paint from the boats and stripping flesh from the men who dredged the oysters; both boats and men needed this period of rest. 

Vacation was half over; in just over two weeks, Carr would have to return to school for Summer Term, but Jesse showed no sign that he planned to end his overextended stay at Cliffsdale Mansion. Neither of Carr's parents noticed. Carr's father had reached the stage where he had requested his wife to read aloud the galleys to him, so that he could identify by ear any typographic errors he had missed by eye. Carr's mother being who she was, she was suggesting small changes to the text along the way, and Carr's father being who he was, he often incorporated her suggestions into the manuscript. This was creating a headache for Carr's publisher, who rang up periodically to plead with Carr's father to confine his changes to necessary items. 

"Truth is always necessary," Carr's father would respond flatly. 

Carr meditated on these words often that spring. Jesse's daily activities had turned Carr's life into a regular routine. Each morning, Jesse would turn up for breakfast, sporting a newspaper with headlines about the latest Abolitionist atrocities, and often sporting several bruises as well. Carr's parents, excitedly discussing the galley proofs or expressing dismay at the Abolitionists' illegal activities, failed to notice either the bruises or Jesse's mocking smile. 

Carr still spent his mornings at work as a border guard. In the early afternoon, Jesse would prowl amongst the servants while Carr tagged along, doggedly determined to offer at least the appearance of still being Jesse's host. They visited places that Carr had not paid attention to for two tri-years, since he first left for school: the woodshed where the watermen's young sons wearily chopped endless logs for the mansion's fireplaces; the packing house, where the watermen's wives stood for hours amidst the slimy remains of the oysters they shucked; the wharf, where a never-ending stream of oysters had to be unloaded from the boats. The servants, surprised by his unexpected appearance, showed an embarrassing tendency to be grateful for his renewed interest in their work. Jesse's smile grew yet more mocking. 

In the mid-afternoon, Jesse would retire to bed for the sake of the sleep he didn't receive at night. Deprived of his study, Carr would take his schoolbooks down to the beach, watching the servants with half an eye, and being far more aware than he had been in the past of how much the House's fortunes depended on the sweating labor of its servants. Occasionally, pulled by some inner instinct, he would take off his jacket and help with some task for which manpower was short. He would have assumed that his Egalitarian training was responsible for this newfound desire to assist his House's servants . . . and perhaps it was, to a certain degree. But once, stepping back with labored breath from a particularly nasty bit of work of wrestling a new stove into a skipjack's galley, he looked up to find Jesse watching him from the terrace above. The mocking smile was absent that day. 

In the evening, after dinner, Jesse would sail into town. Carr would go to bed at his usual time, at ten o'clock in the evening . . . after his usual visit to the kitchen. 

But his pleasure there, which had never been unsullied by guilt, had disappeared altogether. Jesse had stripped Carr's mask to his motive for requiring the servants to fetch him tea. Carr sat there still, night after night, sipping at his tea, staring into the fire, and wondering, by all that was sacred, what kept him coming to this place. 

And why hadn't the servants made clear their displeasure at being forced to do extra work? Despite Jesse's assurance, Carr was certain they must guess at his motive and resent his presence. Yet even Variel – who was quite capable of being politely cold whenever he noticed Carr staring at him – had offered no indication that he disliked this burdensome service. 

Or perhaps he had, and Carr had not noticed? Carr's spirit fell as he contemplated this possibility. Yet the next night he was back again, accepting the fire and the tea and the cookies, as though the answer to some great mystery could be found in them. 

o—o—o

The water on Carruthers Cliffs Cove was calm as the sun rose. A four-masted schooner carrying freight – casks of molasses from the Caribe, judging from the appearance of the labels – headed up-Bay toward the great markets at Balmer. A runner employed by a Solomons Island packing house slid by in the opposite direction, a bushel basket on the masthead proclaiming its mission. It did not pause as it passed a skipjack flying the colors of the House of His Master's Kindness. It was well known that the master of the heirship House owned his own packing house, keeping the profits from his crews' harvest tightly clamped within his own fists. 

A flicker of smooth motion caught Carr's eye. Held by the hand of the morning breeze, one of the House's smaller dredging boats sailed up to the wharf. It was a flattie; one of the men on it was struggling to bring down the sails, while the other jumped onto the wharf and secured the boat's rope. He shouted something at the first man, who was too busy with his sail-battle to respond with anything more than a hand-wave. 

The second man, evidently satisfied that his companion had matters in hand, walked down the wharf toward the shore, whistling, his hands in his pockets, a bounce in his step. As he grew closer, Carr blinked and leaned forward. Yes, of course; Bat was a waterman's son, so he knew how to sail. But how had he obtained permission to use one of the House's boats? 

A small figure was waiting for him on the shore: Sally, her hair whipping across her face. She was holding a wild columbine, its red-and-yellow bell-flower nodding in the breeze; she presented it to Bat as he arrived. He responded with a kiss. As he turned toward the north, his face came clearly into view against the rising sun: it was animated, excited. He opened his mouth to speak, and then looked around, as though fearing to be overheard. He drew Sally aside from the other docked boats and began talking to her, too softly for Carr to hear. 

The other man had finished his work with the sails. He swaggered down the wharf, holding something in his hand. Recognizing the man, Carr pushed himself away from the railing and headed for the stairs to the beach. 

He met Jesse halfway across the beach, where a group of empty barrels leaned slightly askew on the sand. "'Morning," said Jesse cheerfully, throwing his newspaper onto the top of a barrel. It showed the front-page headlines of the morning news: "ABOLITIONISTS HIT AGAIN!" Below the headline, the story said, "The Second Landstead's Office of Police today stated that over forty households in the capital area have reported runaway servants. 'It is clearly evident,' said Comrade Benjamin Carruthers of the Bureau of Employment, 'that we are dealing with a large, sophisticated organization. It is likely that the Abolitionists are recruiting new members. . . .'" 

Carr looked over at Bat, who remained deep in quiet conversation with Sally. Then he looked back at Jesse, who gave him a lazy smile. "Well?" said the young foreigner. 

Carr cleared his throat. "Cook obtained the first crab of the season. She's planning to make crab cakes for lunch. You won't want to miss that dish." 

Jesse laughed. "Point," he said, as though he were a footer player keeping score. "Okay, question for you." 

"Yes?" He braced himself. 

"What the fuck does this mean?" Leaning over, Jesse pointed to the date on the newspaper. 'Eighth day, Spring Childhood week, 1962 Clover.' Clover? And in other parts of the paper, they talk about years with barley and fallow in them. I feel like I'm visiting a damn farm whenever I read the news." 

Carr smiled, partly from amusement and partly from relief as to the nature of Jesse's enquiry. "The terms originated in the First Landstead, back when it was the only landstead. They have good farming country there. Or at least, they did back then. I don't know about now." 

"That's not what I'm asking." Jesse tilted up the waterman's cap that he had evidently borrowed. "What do years have to do with farming?" 

"Not years, sun-cycles. Come, I'll show you." 

He led the way back up to the terrace. There they stepped over the map of the Dozen Landsteads, which showed that all of the landsteads – even the First Landstead – bordered on the Bay. Just beyond the map was a mosaic of a Calendar Circle. 

After examining it for a minute, Jesse said, "Okay, I think I get this. There's three weeks in a month, and three months in a season, and three seasons in a year – no winter, I guess? Just spring, summer, and autumn. My question stands: What do years have to do with farming?" 

"Not years," Carr repeated patiently. "Sun-cycles." He took out his pocket-knife, pulled off a twig from the potted pepperbush on the terrace, and cut himself a pointer. "Look," he said, pointing at the circle. "The calendar is in the shape of a circle, just as time is. If this representation were three-dimensional, we'd see time rising in a spiral: one circuit of the earth around the sun, followed by a second circuit and a third. It's all seamless, with no divisions – but we're men, so we think in divisions. You use a base twelve numbering system in Tenarus, I suppose?" 

Jesse blinked. "Search me. Math isn't my thing." 

Carr gave him a long look before saying, "Yclau originally used a base three system; Vovim originally used a base four system; they compromised and use a base twelve system now. Mip uses a different system altogether – base ten – and since it's the economic center of the Midcoast nations, most of the world uses base-ten dollars as their money system now, rather than base-twelve pounds. But the Dozen Landsteads, from which Yclau is derived, has retained the base three system." 

"You're making my head ache," Jesse complained. He had seated himself cross-legged during the recital and was tracing the nine weeks of spring with his finger: Spring Waning, Spring Illness, Spring Dying, Spring Death, Spring Transformation . . . "Base three means three seasons of three months of three weeks, I guess. Now what the hell does this have to do with farming?" 

"There are three weeks in a month," replied Carr, tapping out their current month, Spring Beginning. "There are three months in a season. There are three seasons in a sun-cycle. And there are three sun-cycles in a year." 

There was a pause, and then Jesse said, "Now my head is really aching." 

Carr laughed as he tossed aside the branch. "It would be easier to see in a three-dimensional model. You can call it a tri-year, if you like; we started using that word a few decades ago – tri-decades – because foreigners were confused. The rest of the Midcoast nations, you see, consider a sun-cycle to be a year. So in Yclau and her colonies, as you know, last year was 586, this year is 587, and next year will be 588. But here in the Dozen Landsteads, last year was 1962 Barley, this year is 1962 Clover, and next year is 1962 Fallow." 

"And then you start over?" Squinting against the rising sun, Jesse looked up at him. 

"And then we start over, with 1963 Barley. It's all arbitrary, of course. There's nothing in nature that says we have three sun-cycles or three months or three weeks. Moreover, we could count a sun-cycle as having four seasons, the way the Vovimians do. My father says that it would be most sensible, here next to the Bay, to have two seasons: Oyster Season and Crab Season." 

"So why count everything in threes?" Dusting off the seat of his trousers, Jesse rose to his feet. 

Carr gave him the sort of look that a school master might give to a slow pupil. "Death, transformation, rebirth. That's not arbitrary; that's how nature works." 

"Yeah, except you don't call this year 1962 Transformation. Why do I have the feeling that you started off with farming years, and then tacked on a religious explanation afterwards?" 

Carr was silent for a long time. Below on the beach, servants were beginning to arrive for work, yawning into their fists. Bat and Sally had disappeared. 

Finally Carr set aside the pointer and said, "You take a cynical view of life, don't you?" 

Jesse shrugged. "Comes with the territory. . . . I'm starved. Let's grab something to eat in the kitchen." 

They walked along the terrace, heading toward the side of the house. Below, on the beach, servants walked toward the packing house or the wharf. A runner docked, only half full of oyster baskets; pickings were becoming slim at this time of year. Carr and Jesse rounded the corner of the house. Ahead, in the little outbuilding next to the Death Wing, smoke rose from the dependency's chimney. 

Jesse said, "So are you masters allowed to fuck as many people as you want?" 

Startled by this abrupt change of subject, Carr answered with the same promptness that he would have shown toward a school master's enquiry. "Before marriage, you mean? Well, we're allowed to bed any unmarried liegeman who has pledged himself to us; that's considered part of the service that a liegeman owes to his liege-master, though some liege-masters, such as my father, never require that service. Beyond that, it's considered a matter of judgment—" 

Too late, he realized the reason for the enquiry. He looked over and saw that Jesse was grinning. 

Tamping down his temper, Carr said, "I'm sorry, but the answer is still no." 

"Just checking," said Jesse cheerfully. "It's a standing offer, you know." 

Carr knew he ought to drop this topic at once, but his curiosity had been roused for some time about the homeland that Jesse never mentioned. "What about in your native land?" Carr asked. "What are the rules there?" 

"You mean, do we have to be monogamous? Nah, we're easy about such things in Tenarus. Mind you," he added with a grimace, "in my case, that's also part of the territory." 

He slipped through the kitchen doorway before Carr could ask him what he meant. Jesse's entrance was greeted by cries of approval: Millie gave a little screech of pleasure, Irene offered a warm greeting, Variel enquired politely after Jesse's health, Cook gruffly offered to let Jesse have whatever ingredients he wanted if he wished to make his own breakfast, and Bat and Sally – who had evidently just reached the kitchen – tumbled over themselves saying that the other servants must hear, oh it was so important that the other servants know— 

The voices stopped. Carr had stepped into the doorway. 

The servants' silence was familiar to Carr; their looks of consternation were not. Carr could guess why they were bewildered: this was not the time of day when he usually interrupted them for a cup of tea. 

Jesse filled the silence. "Nah, no big meal for me, folks. Maybe just a bun or two? Thanks. Carr, do you want one?" 

He shook his head mutely. He was trying to decide whether to withdraw from this embarrassing situation, but Jesse grabbed his arm and steered him into the next room. "Won't be long," he assured the servants. "Carr and I are due in the dining room soon. Here, have a little reading matter." He tossed the newspaper to Variel, who caught it with one hand. 

"Landstead servants can't read," Carr informed him in a low voice as soon as the door to the back room was closed. 

"That's what you think." Jesse smirked at him. "You forbid an entire Houseful of servants to read, and what do you think's going to happen? Anyway, your father taught Variel to read years ago." 

"Did he?" Startled, Carr paused as he was about to sit down. 

"Gods, Carr, you've been living with that guy for how long, and you didn't know he could read? Pay attention, will you? Servants aren't robots, passively awaiting your programming." 

"I know that." Carr frowned with annoyance. "It's just that my father never mentioned this. It's against the high law to teach a servant to read; the High Masters passed that law in the nineteenth tri-century. I know it's one of the laws that my father is fighting to abolish, but I didn't think he—" 

He stopped abruptly. His eyes met Jesse's. Then, by common consent, they rose and went to the door. 

His mother stood before the stove, in the midst of tying on an apron. "Now, then," she said, "I think the next ingredient is the eggs, isn't it?" 

"Ma'am—" Cook's voice faltered as Carr's mother, without hesitation, tossed the eggs into the bowl and began mixing vigorously. 

A moment later, his mother paused. "Oh," she said. "We're supposed to shell the eggs first, aren't we?" 

Cook answered her with grim silence. 

"Well, that's all right; we'll just start over." With those words, his mother picked up the bowl and poured the contents into the rubbish bin. Cook's delectable recipe – the work of hours – trickled down amidst vegetable peels and fireplace ashes. 

Sally gave a stifled gasp. Bat groaned. Irene simply stared open-mouthed. 

"So where do we start again?" His mother looked around the kitchen table. "Cook?" 

"Those were the last of the eggs, ma'am." 

His mother failed to notice Cook's tone. "Oh, please don't call me ma'am. We're all friends here. Let's see . . . the Solomons Island market should be open by now, shouldn't it?" 

This time, Sally was the one who groaned. Bat put a comforting arm around her. 

"Now, then, money . . ." His mother patted the pockets of her apron, as though bills were to be found there. "Irene—" 

"I'll fetch your purse, ma'am," Irene said in a resigned voice. 

"Call me Comradess!" his mother cried after her. Then she added, "Let's see, we pour in this salt . . ." 

Millie, seeing Carr's mother reach for the sugar jar, emitted a giggle. 

His mother turned around, surprise written on her face. "Did I say something funny?" 

There was no response but another giggle from Millie, who was holding the edge of her apron over her mouth in an attempt to suppress the sound, but who had evidently reached the stage of hysteria. 

The hysteria was infectious; Cook and Bat and Sally were all covering smiles now. Seeing this, Carr's mother stood motionless, a flush covering her face and throat. Variel, frowning, opened his mouth, no doubt to reprimand the other servants. 

"I trust that you have all received pleasure from laughing at my wife." 

The voice, hot with rage rather than cold, could come from only one source. Everyone swung around to look at the doorway, where Comrade Carruthers stood, a murderous expression on his face. 

"Dearest," said his wife faintly, "I seem to have . . . I mean, I made some sort of joke, but I'm not sure I—" 

Carr decided that, in this respect at least, he was duty-bound to intervene. "It's all right, Mother," he said, stepping forward and putting his arm around her shoulders gently. "It's just one of those moments when everyone gets a fit of the giggles, for no particular reason. They weren't laughing at you." 

"Are you sure?" The look of bewildered hopefulness his mother gave him would have wrung the heart of the hardest villain. Millie was biting her lip now, looking chagrined. 

"Quite sure. Ah, Irene, there you are. Will you take my mother to her room, please? —I'll be up there shortly, and I'll explain all about the giggles," he told his mother. He would have to explain them to her, he knew; his mother, though emotionally vulnerable and frequently taken off-guard, was always eager to learn when she had taken a misstep. Explaining her mistakes to her usually turned out to be Carr's job, since his father was too busy blaming other people for his wife's mistakes. 

Now, with his wife safely out of the way, Carr's father gave a hard stare at everyone present, evidently trying to identify the chief offender. Millie had turned white. 

Not having heard the beginning of the tale, though, his father chose the easiest course. "Variel," he said, "you are in charge here. How dare you allow such a scene to develop! You and I had better have a discussion about this." He pointed toward the doorway to the back room, currently blocked by Jesse – who, for a wonder, was not smiling. 

In fact, there was something in Jesse's eyes that Carr liked not at all. The young foreigner stepped back, though, as Carr's father and Variel walked past. The door closed behind them. The servants exchanged looks. 

The "discussion" began at once; Carr's father kept a switch in the back room for occasions like this – though, to be fair, he used it less than most masters did. Carr tried to keep that in mind as they all listened to the crack of the switch against bare flesh. 

Six minutes later, the door opened again. Variel, with his collar still undone but otherwise fully uniformed, left the back room. His cheeks were clam-pale. Carr's father paused long enough to say the obvious – "I will not countenance the ridiculing of my wife" – and then left for the main house, Variel trailing behind him. 

Which left Carr to represent the "comrades" of the House. Everyone was looking at him now, including Jesse. 

Carr cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he murmured. "My mother is expecting me." And he slipped away, feeling very much like a forward who has lost control of the ball.


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

The great ocean-liners of the world – all owned by companies in the Dozen Landsteads – were palaces of luxury, with grand ballrooms for nightly singing and dancing, stately staircases, gilded dining rooms, and cabin suites. 

That was if you were a master. The hold of an ocean liner was reserved for servants and for foreign commoners who could not afford to pay even the minimal fee for third-ranked passage. It was dim, damp, and crowded. No ballroom was needed, for singing and dancing had been outlawed to Landstead servants since the nineteenth tri-century, when the Commoners' Guild of Yclau had spread sedition throughout the Midcoast nations by means of ballads. Cramped cabins housed the servant/commoner men at the bow of the liner; equally cramped cabins at the stern housed the servant/commoner women and children. Families were thus split apart along lines of sex and age, reuniting in the daytime in the stark common room between the cabins, which was also filled with engine rooms, furnaces, livestock pens, and other equipment required for long trips. 

Now, as the voyage came to an end, the on-duty border guards were attempting to make order out of chaos. At the center of the hold stood a spiral staircase which was the sole means of exit from the hold (a fact well publicized by foreign newspapers since the woeful occasion on which a liner had caught on fire near that staircase, causing many foreign passengers – and all servant passengers – to perish). Around the staircase, the border guards had positioned twenty-seven booths, with gates in between. Now they were trying their best to usher the illiterate servants up to the correct booths, a job roughly akin to persuading feral cats to enter cages. 

"Fours this way, please!" called one guard. "Over here, fours!" 

"Excuse me." A foreign commoner politely tapped the guard on his shoulder. "We're a party of four. Do we queue up here?" 

Endlessly patient with foreign misunderstandings, the servant-guard replied, "No, good woman. Here in the Dozen Landsteads, our numbering system is the same as our lettering system. What is your family name? Getson?" He glanced at the woman's passage-of-port. "You're with the eights, then. The letter eight-G," he added in the King's tongue of Vovim, seeing that the woman didn't understand. "Eight and G are the same word in the Dozen Landsteads. Sir, would it be of pleasure to you to show this family to the eights queue?" He tipped his cap at Carr, who had finished his duties for the day with the first- and second-ranked passengers, but had come downstairs in search of his supervisor. 

"Certainly, comrade," Carr replied carefully. As far as he could tell, not a single servant or lower-ranked master who worked as a border guard was prepared to be foolhardy enough to acknowledge him as an equal, but Carr never departed from the training he had received from his father. "If you'll come this way—" He tipped his uniform cap politely to the foreign woman and proceeded to usher her and her three children toward the correct queue. 

She was Vovimian, though. Instead of remaining respectfully silent, as a Landstead servant would have, she said, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?" 

"Not at all." His gaze travelled over to his supervisor, who was standing at the zero booth, giving gruff instructions to a subordinate. 

"Why are all those booths in a circle? Why not put them in a line?" 

"They're in a calendar circle," he replied. Then, seeing her blank expression, he added, "They're in alphabetical order." 

Her expression remained blank. Two of her children looked as dusky and weary as their mother, but the oldest child – just as dusky-skinned as the rest, but more alert – was tilting her head, listening in on her mother's conversation with the guard. 

He tried again, his mind drifting back to a recent conversation with Jesse. "In the Dozen Landsteads, we represent the alphabet in a circular manner. —Here." He paused to pick up a pointer that had a stick of chalk attached to it – used by the boiler-room servants to mark equipment that had been inspected. Carr proceeded to draw a large circle on the metal floor of the hold. "There are twenty-seven letters in the alphabet—" 

"Twenty-six," corrected the oldest child primly. She was apprentice-aged, perhaps four tri-years old, with her hair in braids and her body clothed in what Carr guessed was her best dress. It was considerably worse for wear from the journey. 

"Sweet one!" scolded her mother. "Don't contradict the gentleman." 

He smiled at the child. "You have twenty-six letters in Vovim. Here in the Dozen Landsteads, we have twenty-seven. The twenty-seventh is called the zero letter, because our letters also represent numbers." 

"And the next letter is A?" The child pointed to the space just past the high point of the circle, further down the circumference. 

"One-A," he said in the King's tongue, hoping that his Vovimian grammar, which he had learned in school, was correct. As he spoke, he wrote the symbol for the letter: a cross. 

"And the next letter is B," said the mother, entering into the game. 

"Two-B. A cross and a hyphen." He wrote down the symbols, +-. Then he waited for the others to catch up with his lesson. 

"Three-C." It was the girl again. He wrote down what she said: +0. "Four-D." ++. "Five-E." +--. 

Within a couple of minutes, they had reached the nadir of the circle. The girl hesitated, as though unwilling to venture further without guidance. Her mother prompted, "Fourteen-N." 

"I'm afraid not," Carr replied. "Here's where the alphabet wraps around on itself. Negative-thirteen-N." He wrote out the symbols: ---. 

"Look!" cried the child. "The symbol for thirteen is three crosses. The symbol for negative thirteen is three hyphens. That's not a coincidence, is it?" She appealed to authority. 

"No, it's not," replied Carr, surprised that she had made the connection. "We used balanced tertiary symbols in the Dozen Landsteads. That means you can make any number negative, simply by reversing its hyphens and crosses—" 

"So negative-twelve-O is hyphen-hyphen-zero." The child took the pointer from him and wrote down the latest letter on the circle. 

His mother mistook the source of his astonishment, saying proudly, "She's very good with numbers. She's in the gifted program at school." 

The child, more perceptive, took one look at his face and offered the pointer back. "Sorry. I didn't mean to grab." 

"That's all right." He hesitated, wondering how he could convey the important information that servants who grabbed from masters in the Dozen Landsteads could end up in jail. 

"I won't do it again," the child said quickly, perhaps seeing the concern on his face. "Grabbing is rude." 

Satisfied, he handed her the pointer. "Here. You write out the rest." 

She happily did so. "See?" she told the other children, who were beginning to show signs of waking up. "Three symbols – like the computers use. That's a base three numbering system. In ancient times, Yclau used base three. Vovim used base four. Then they decided that they should have the same numbering system, so they picked base twelve, because twelve can be divided into both three and four, see?" 

"No," replied the youngest child crossly; he was lying on his belly, watching the creation of the calendar circle. "My teacher hasn't taught us to input division yet." 

"You can do it without a computer, right?" The middle child, kneeling on her dress beside her brother, appealed to the oldest child. 

"Of course you can! Humans can do anything computers can, just slower. Here, I'll show you." The oldest child took something from the pocket of her dress. With relief, Carr saw that it was a pad of paper, rather than a computer. 

"Dearest, get off the floor; you're mussing your dress." The woman scolded the middle child in an automatic fashion, then turned her attention back to Carr. "We're saving up money for my eldest's education," she said proudly. "With her grades, she's sure to be eligible for a scholarship to attend the local university. She'll be the first person in my family, or her father's, to attend college." 

"Congratulations," Carr said. He glanced at his supervisor, who was still busy, and then at the booths, where the twenty-six remaining border guards were checking the passages-of-port of the servant passengers. No problems seemed to be arising; the passengers were being waved with alacrity toward the central staircase. 

"What I don't understand," said the oldest child, right under him, so that he was forced to look down at her. "What I don't understand is why the alphabet is in a circle, rather than a straight line. You never explained that." Her voice was accusing, as though she thought he was a school master avoiding a question he couldn't answer. 

He found himself smiling again. "It's a circle of rebirth," he said. "Have you heard of those?" 

"_I_ have," said the youngest child, evidently tired of playing the role of his sister's pupil. "My pal Johnnie goes to a temple where they teach about rebirth. His priestess says that, after death, hell's High Master takes evil people down to hell and tortures them, but if they repent of doing bad, he sends them to his sister Mercy, and she makes them alive again—" 

"Yes, dear, but that's Johnnie's temple," his mother said firmly. "What actually happens is that evil people stay in hell forever, and good people are sent by Mercy to heaven." She added apologetically to Carr, "So many of our temples have been infected by Yclau superstition, but our family follows the traditional beliefs." 

"Mother!" the oldest child protested loudly. "You're being rude to him! Landsteaders believe in rebirth, just like the Yclau do." 

Carr dowsed a momentary flame of annoyance. "Actually, the Yclau learned the concept of rebirth from us. Ours was the first nation to conceive of time as a circle." He turned to the woman, who was looking chagrined, and said, "I'm not trying to convert your children to the Landstead religion. It's a mathematical concept, as well as a religious belief: some of the Vovimian mathematicians have shown interest in the idea that time isn't a straight line but a circle that loops around on itself—" 

"A spiral." The oldest child pointed to the spiral staircase. 

"Exactly. We draw the calendar as a circle, but we're actually looking down on a spiral from above. Time twirls round and round, going higher and higher." 

"Look, it's simple," the oldest child insisted as her mother frowned in puzzlement. "You're standing in the middle of a spiral staircase." She pointed to the zero. "You can see thirteen steps going up. That's one-A through thirteen-M. And you can also see thirteen steps going _down_. That's negative-one-Z through negative-thirteen-N. The steps keep going further, but you can't see that, because the spiral wraps round on itself. Master—" 

He felt a jump in his throat and had to remind himself that, in Vovim, the word "master" had become nothing more than a polite way of addressing a stranger. "Yes?" 

"When you're standing on a spiral staircase, you can lean over and see the step that's directly above you and directly below you. Do you think you could jump up or down and skip through time like that?" 

The boy rolled his eyes. His mother said weakly, "Sweet one . . ." 

"You're quite right." He smiled at the child. "We call that 'cycle forward' or 'cycle back' in the Dozen Landsteads. When you meet a moment in time that connects with something that happened in the past or will happen in the future, you may momentarily jump forward or back – just in your mind, you understand – and thereby you will see what happened in the past or will happen in the future. In that way, you can understand the way in which the events you are currently experiencing connect with your past or your future." Or your past lives or your future lives. But it seemed best not to say that, given the mother's prejudice against the concept of rebirth into new lives. 

"We could build a time machine!" With excitement, the oldest child turned to her siblings. "We could build a machine that would let us jump up and down the spiral of time whenever we wanted!" 

"You'd have to major in temporal engineering," pointed out the youngest child. 

"Could you do that?" asked the middle child doubtfully. "I heard it's hard for girls to get into the School of Engineering. . . ." 

"You're so very kind to indulge my daughter's curiosity, Master . . ." The mother hesitated, lacking his name. 

"I'm M Carruthers," he said, slipping his hand into his inner jacket pocket. 

"Carruthers? Are you related in any way to the Carruthers of the First District?" 

"Distantly. My family came from the First Landstead – the First District – long ago." 

"Well, imagine that!" The woman put a gloved hand to her mouth. "My second cousin married a girl from the First District named Carruthers. You're _family_." 

That gave him the opening he wanted. Slipping out a tremissis bill from his wallet, he pressed it into the woman's free hand. "Then accept this as a family gift." 

She stared at the money. "Oh, really, no . . . I couldn't . . ." 

"For your daughter." He nodded his head toward the oldest girl, who was now explaining why the computers of the world used a base three numeral system. "Please," he added. "I don't imagine you've budgeted much money for luxuries on this trip." 

The woman dimpled. "That's true enough. It was my daughter's idea to come. She heard that the Second Landstead University has a working astrolabe, and she was passionate to see it. But really, Master Carruthers—" 

"There's a shop just over the bridge, on the mainland," he persisted. "It's intended for masters and mastresses, but if you give the shopkeeper my name, he'll serve you. The shop sells cardboard circles showing the Landstead calendar, alphabet/number system, the heliograph code . . . I think your oldest daughter would enjoy it." 

"Well," said the indulgent mother, obviously swayed by this argument, "you _are_ family. . . ." 

Carr glanced at the zero booth. The supervisor was free now. "I think it's time I helped you into the eight-G queue. The guards here are nearly finished checking passages-of-port." 

This news stirred the woman into a frenzy. She gathered up her children and rushed over to the eight-G queue, but not before handing Carr her name and address, which she scribbled onto a scrap of paper, urging him to visit any time, saying she'd prepare him a real home-cooked meal, she'd press the microwave buttons herself . . . 

She bustled away. The oldest girl, though, appeared disposed to linger. "Hoi, master," she said. 

Again, that jump at the throat. "Yes?" 

"I want to know where I can find more information about this." She pointed to the circle. 

"Well," he said cautiously, "books have been written about the Landstead concept of time . . ." 

"Oh, of course!" The girl dimpled, just as her mother had done. "I'll ask my school librarian about them. Thanks, master!" 

He watched her go, seeing, in a dark corner of his mind, what sort of life she would have led in the Second Landstead. A servant girl, beaten repeatedly for showing ambition, denied the opportunity for education, denied the ability to rise higher than her rank at birth. 

He realized now why his father had wanted him to take this job. Not merely because it was servants' work, but because it was work that brought him into contact with foreigners. Carr had spent so much of his childhood visiting his uncle that, unlike his father, he had not had time to travel abroad. He had been denied the opportunity to see what the Dozen Landsteads could be like if its laws were reformed. 

He turned away. The image of the girl had transformed unexpectedly into the image of Jesse. He found himself wondering whether he should show Jesse the calendar circle again, so that he could learn the alphabet. . . . 

He shook his head. He was being absurd. With the exception of the zero number, Yclau and its colonies used the same alphabet as the Dozen Landsteads did. Jesse could already read the Landstead language; he carried books and newspapers written in that language. Why should it have come into Carr's head that Jesse would need help to read? 

Unwilling to explore further this disturbing path of thought, Carr approached the supervisor, who was busy checking the records of the guards who had already completed their queues. Without looking up, the supervisor said, "What service do you require of me, master." 

It was the traditional phrase from a liegeman to his liege-master, which the first-ranked supervisor was duty-bound to speak to his liege-master, the High Master. Out of courtesy, he might speak it also to the High Master's heir, who would one day be his liege-master. 

But spoken as it was, in a flat tone, it conveyed nothing of courtesy. Instead, the supervisor's meaning was quite clear: "Bloody blades, man, I'm busy. Go away and stop bothering me." 

The hold of the steamer was beginning to empty. The Vovimian children were skipping up the spiral staircase now, shouting their delight when they discovered that it did indeed have twenty-seven steps. Most of the other foreigners looked reasonably relaxed. Commoners who came from other countries had either scraped together money to visit one of the few nations that still offered affordable holidays – because the Dozen Landsteads was so far off the usual tourist circuit – or else they were immigrating because they had heard that labor jobs were plentiful in this nation. Presumably, the immigrants had not yet learned that, once situated here, they would not be permitted to leave. 

The Landstead servants were looking far less comfortable. At the beginning of the tri-century, when the Dozen Landsteads began to spurn foreign influences, there had been a spate of servants leaving the nation: men and women seeking a better life in the First District of Yclau – as the First Landstead was then called – or other foreign parts. "Runaways," the masters and mastresses called them, because they had not sought their betters' permission before leaving. 

In the end, faced with this drain on the nation's manpower, the High Masters had passed a new act proclaiming that no servant could leave the Dozen Landsteads unless accompanied by his master or mastress. The border guards were given orders to shoot runaways. 

Carr bore no gun; neither did any of the other port guards, for the simple reason that the ocean steamer could not leave port until given permission by the guards' supervisor. But the servants here – all returning from foreign lands in the company of their masters or mastresses – did not know this. All they knew was that the guards here could kill them on a whim. 

The supervisor was still waiting. Carr cleared his throat. "Sir," he said quietly, to remind the supervisor that, whatever rank Carr held, he was still a journeyman in training. "I apologize for interrupting you. Might I ask a brief question?" 

He was never quite sure what it was that made lesser-ranked men and women listen to him. But the magic worked again; though he did not look up, the supervisor paused in turning pages. "Go ahead." 

Carr struggled to find a way to concisely express his hopes and fears. "I've been working here for nearly a month now. I know that you won't be giving me a formal evaluation, but I was wondering . . . am I doing well in my work?" 

"You're doing fine, Master Carruthers." The supervisor's hand moved again as he turned the page showing the daily evaluations of his guards' performance. "Don't worry yourself." 

He tried again. "I know that I've made some bad mistakes—" 

"Don't worry, sir." The supervisor jotted down a brief, excruciatingly frank deprecation of one guard's activities. "Everyone makes mistakes. —Hey! What do you think you're doing, man? —Excuse me, Master Carruthers." The supervisor hurried off. Soon he was shouting at one of the guard-servants who, having completed his work for the day, had moved his booth into storage, four inches to the right of where it should have been. 

Carr watched for a while as the supervisor roundly bawled out his negligent guards and briefly praised the guards who had performed well. Nobody looked in Carr's direction. Everyone knew that he was immune from such evaluations. Indeed, none of the other guards had spoken to him since his unexpected arrival during Spring Transformation. The servant-guards were scared stiff of him, and the master-guards were clearly uncertain what to say to a man who came from such an eccentric House. 

Besides, they knew what he would be, one day. 

Carr moved toward the spiral staircase, seeking the fresh air upstairs. There was nothing in this place that was in any way odd or out of the ordinary. The other lads at school also treated him with distant respect. Only one lad there was willing to drop respectful formality and treat him as a friend . . . and Carr had never been entirely sure whether Arth did so as a form of incipient liege-service to his future liege-master. 

Nothing was different, nothing had changed. And yet everything had changed, Carr reflected as he placed his foot on the first step of the staircase. Everything had changed since he met a young foreigner who showed him not the least bit of respect. 

o—o—o

Carr had just left his usual spot in the dependency – out of the way of the servants, drinking the tea that Sally had brought him, and perusing the lengthiest of Jesse's books, _A Concise History of the Dozen Landsteads_, having set aside the world atlas some time before – when the dependency's front door burst open and Jesse staggered through the doorway, bleeding onto the newly washed kitchen floor. 

There was an immediate outcry from the servants, quickly shushed by Variel, who hurried forward to take hold of Jesse's waist, preventing the young man from sliding to the floor. Jesse smiled up at him with a lopsided grin. "Always knew . . . you'd recognize my charms in the end." 

"Jesse!" Conscious of his parents, who remained awake in the main building, Carr kept his voice low as he ran forward. "What happened? How did you get hurt?" 

Jesse turned his lopsided smile upon Carr as the blood continued to stream down his arm. "A little disagreement between me and a whip. I lost." 

"But—" 

"If you'll excuse us, master," Variel said firmly, "I think it would be best for me to tend Comrade Jesse in his room." 

His tone said, as loudly as a steam-engine whistle, "Out of my way, you incompetent whippersnapper – leave this to someone who knows what he's doing." Carr carefully backed away, nearly stumbling over Millie, who had gone down on her hands and knees to wipe the blood off the floor. Millie glared up at Carr before she remembered her place and lowered her gaze. 

Carr mumbled an apology. Still holding his books, he retreated from the kitchen, partly to give the servants an opportunity to discuss this event amongst themselves, and partly in order to visit his father's library. 

He had to walk past the sitting room in order to reach the library. His mother was in the midst of one of her periodic attempts to darn a sock. Since she never actually asked the advice of anyone who knew how to darn a sock, the results were invariably dreadful. She looked as though she were about to reach the stage she always reached, when she threw the sock into the mending basket, where the stitches would be painstakingly removed by Irene before the servant set about doing a proper mending job, thus doubling the amount of mending that Irene had to do. 

As it turned out, his father was in the library, reading a copy of _The Commoners' Chronicle_, one of the foreign newspapers that he was entitled to read, as an official contracted to the House of Government. "Looking for something?" he asked without raising his eyes from the paper. 

_"The Mippite Boys' Handy Book,"_ Carr replied, crouching down to look at the bookshelves near the floor, where his old children's books were kept. 

"By all that's sacred, you're going back to your boyhood, aren't you?" his father said mildly, turning a page with a rustle. "Are you planning to build a city with nothing but 'spare items found in the trash,' as the author puts it?" 

"It has a chapter on first aid," replied Carr, pushing aside his much-beloved copy of _Fantastic Voyages to the Moon and Beyond_, which he had read each night between his third and fourth tri-year. That book had not been an import; it was one of the few books of scientifiction that the Dozen Landsteads had produced. Though he supposed, he thought as he flipped past the copies of utopian novels about Egalitarian nations that his parents had given him, that the First Landstead might have produced hundreds of scientifiction novels by now. After all, that landstead was a work of scientifiction in itself. 

"First aid? Have you hurt yourself?" His father looked up quickly from the newspaper. 

Carr shook his head as he pushed back the scientifiction novels to hide a box which he kept behind them. He straightened up, holding the battered copy of his _Handy Book_. "One of the servants has. He got cut with a whip." 

"Ah." His father subsided back into his paper, saying only, "I didn't know we still owned horses." 

Carr did not bother to reply. He had just reached the door when his father roused himself enough to add, "First aid, you say?" 

"Yes, sir." 

His father gave him a quick smile. "Try to remember who you're speaking to, comrade." 

"I'm sorry, Father." It took all his effort to keep impatience out of his voice; Jesse might very well be bleeding to death at this moment. 

"First aid, first aid . . ." His father stared a moment at the high ceiling, which could only be cleaned by servants on ladders. "Oh, yes, I remember now. Middle bookshelf, next to the mantelpiece. You might find that volume helpful. Imported from Yclau – the latest medical advice. Their doctors are the best, you know." 

"Thank you, Father." He found the book as his father was speaking: a hefty tome with print so small that he had to squint to look at it. 

"Not at all." His father waved his hand expansively without looking up from the newspaper. "I'm glad to hear that you're taking up new service skills. Maybe you can teach the rest of us when you're through." 

Carr had a vision of his mother applying ointments with cheerful indifference as to the nature of the labels, and he winced inwardly. "I'll bring the book back when I'm through," he promised. 

His father's only response was a grunt. Carr walked past the sitting room – his mother had abandoned the half-darned sock in favor of reading the latest issue of _Good Housecleaning_ – and made his way steadily to the foyer, where he broke into a run. 

Using the servants' staircase, he went to his own room first and hurriedly read over the relevant entries. The medical book told him no more than the _Handy Book_ did on how to treat cuts – it was simply more long-winded – but Carr took care to skim the following chapter, which was on how to treat war wounds. Then, still carrying with him one of the books he had been reading in the dependency, he went to look in the pantry tucked away near the servants' stairs. He emerged with bandages and a bottle of iodine. 

When he reached Jesse's room, he saw that Variel had anticipated him in the matter of the bandages. The valet was in the midst of rolling a bandage around the arm of Jesse, who was bare to the waist. When Carr opened the door, both of the men tensed, then relaxed again when they saw who it was, though Variel's eyes remained wary. 

"Did you put iodine on first?" Carr asked Variel. 

"No, master; I'm sorry." 

"I told him not to," Jesse inserted. "I don't want your parents missing medical items and wondering where they've gone." 

"They'll never miss a bit of iodine. It's all right, Variel," Carr added as the valet came forward. "I'll take care of it. I've bandaged team-mates when our team was short of medics during games." 

Looking dubious, Variel departed with no word but a bow. Jesse – pale-faced but alert – cocked his head at Carr. "Do you know anything about first aid, or are you just faking it?" 

"I took a medical class as part of my military training," Carr replied, placing the iodine on the dresser next to the bed. "I know how to extract a bullet from a wound, if that's what you really have under those bandages." 

Jesse gave a low chuckle as Carr sat down beside him. "I probably would, if this had happened back home. But your policemen in the Dozen Landsteads are so wonderfully old-fashioned. I met up with one who was carrying a whip and – wait for it – a dagger. I felt as though I'd just encountered a frontispiece in a book about the Eternal Dungeon." 

"The Eternal Dungeon is in Yclau," Carr said as he carefully peeled back the bandage. 

"Is it? It was mentioned in one of the books I read about the Dozen Landsteads." 

Carr said nothing. The room was lit only by the lamp on the wall next to the bed; everything was shadow-dusky other than himself, Jesse, and the objects on the dresser. 

Jesse said, "Have you just discovered that I've been cut by one of the infamous poisoned whips of the Dozen Landsteads?" 

Carr looked up then. "We don't poison our whips." 

"Well, I hope not, or this is going to be a short conversation. Look, what's up? When you shut down like that, I know I've given the wrong answer." 

"We can talk about it afterwards. Let me take care of this first." Carr peeled back the last of the bandages; as he did so, Jesse's breath hitched. Carr looked quickly at his face, which had grown yet paler. "Are you all right?" 

"Don't worry, I've had worse done to me." Jesse's lopsided smile was back. "What's the verdict, doctor? Will I live?" 

"You? You're living proof of the reality of rebirth. No matter what is done to you overnight, you end up at the breakfast table each morning, smiling cheerfully." As Carr spoke, he sprinkled iodine on the wound. Jesse's breath hissed in again, but he didn't move. "I bet that stung," Carr said, without moving his eyes from the wound. 

"Like I said, I've had worse done to me. What's the book you brought with you?" 

Carr handed it to him and waited for the iodine to dry while Jesse leafed one-handed through the volume. "Interested in world geography?" Jesse commented. 

"Page fourteen," Carr replied, taking up the fresh bandage roll and cutting out an appropriate length. The cut on Jesse's arm did look as though it came from a whip, and it had already stopped bleeding. Carr hoped that his own, minimal medical skills wouldn't worsen matters. 

Jesse looked up from perusing page fourteen. "Well, well – I had no idea that Yclau possessed so many colonies." 

"Tenarus isn't on the list of colonies." 

"Tenarus is a city," Jesse countered. 

"I checked the index of the atlas. It lists every city and town in the world, down to small villages. Tenarus isn't listed." Carr began to wrap the bandage around his visitor's arm. "Jesse, you're not a colonial. You don't know elementary facts about Yclau, yet you sound as though you've been reading whole encyclopedias on the Dozen Landsteads. Out-of-date encyclopedias. You know the Yclau tongue . . . but so does anyone who wants to visit the Dozen Landsteads for a lengthy period of time, because Yclau and the Dozen Landsteads share the same language." Tying the bandages with a final knot, Carr leaned back. "Who _are_ you? And where have you come from?" 

Jesse's smile did not reach his eyes this time. "Does it matter where I come from?" Then, as Carr remained silent, Jesse shrugged and added, "I told you, I'm from Tenarus, and I told you, you won't have heard of it before. Anyway, I haven't been living in Tenarus for a while now. I'm officially the resident of a country nearby – another one you won't have heard of – and I haven't been living there for months. I've been travelling." 

"Why?" 

"Why?" Jesse cocked his head. "Because I have a boyfriend in medical school, that's why." 

"A—" It took Carr longer than usual to disentangle Jesse's dialect, probably because the word he was using had no Landstead equivalent. Carr resorted to using a word that the Yclau had coined. "A love-mate, you mean? You're bonded to a doctor?" 

"Someone who's studying to be a doctor, which means my boyfriend is up past midnight each night, studying or talking to his new friends or reading medical journals. . . . After a while of this, I realized I could do one of three things. I could use my considerable talents at seduction to distract Quen from his studies and make him fail medical school. Or I could kill all his new friends in a fit of jealousy. Or I could go travelling till he found time for me again. I opted for the travel." 

Smiling despite himself, Carr took the atlas back from Jesse. "That doesn't explain how you ended up bleeding on my kitchen floor. Or why you have a passage-of-port from Yclau." 

"Oh, well, the passage-of-port . . ." Jesse waved his hand vaguely. "Some sort of computer mix-up in the First Landstead. I was trying for a passage-of-port that would show I was from the First Landstead, so that I could visit there, and this is what showed up in my mailbox instead, along with a ticket to Solomons Island. I figured, Okay, I might as well start my trip from the Second Landstead. It had to be either the Dozen Landsteads or Yclau, because I'd already learned the language your two countries use." 

"You could have gone to Mip," said Carr, tucking in a stray bit of bandage. "Most of the citizens there speak the Landstead tongue as well. You would have liked it better in Mip – no master rank or service rank there." 

"See, now, you should have been telling me all this months ago," Jesse said crossly, as though Carr was to blame for everything that had gone wrong, including the whip-cut. "But you missed the point. I'm not travelling to places I think I'll like. I'm travelling to places I know I'll hate." 

In the small silence that followed, Carr could hear the tick of the clock in the room, the clatter of kitchen dishes through the window, and the murmur of his mother and father downstairs. Stepping carefully into the next portion of the conversation, he asked, "What sort of work were you doing in – in the place you came from?" 

Jesse rolled his eyes. Carr gave a rueful smile and said, "All right, that was a stupid question. But how did you get into that sort of work? And what do you hope to accomplish here? And did the whip reach your back?" 

"What?" Jesse stared, then gave a short laugh. "Fucking hell, Carr, you've got to stop that. _I'm_ supposed to be the one to change topics suddenly. . . . No, I don't think so. It doesn't hurt there." Jesse looked over his shoulder. 

"Let me see." Carr turned Jesse around so that his back was facing the light. There was no sign that the lash had reached the back; the fine hairs there appeared undisturbed. Carr trailed his fingers along the back, seeking any sign of hidden damage. 

Jesse stiffened. Carr's fingers paused, and he would have withdrawn his hand, but his hand lingered. Too faint to be seen, something could be felt under the hair on Jesse's back. Not a newly made wound, no. What he felt was a smoothness of skin, as though it was new skin – new skin that had healed over an old wound. 

He traced it along the back, then trailed his hands down further. Yes, it was there: parallel lines, as though the back had been furrowed. Unmistakable to anyone, such as Carr, who had seen a Household punishment carried out. 

Keeping his voice low, Carr said, "You're a servant?" 

"Yeah. Was." Jesse's voice was too level to be read. 

"A runaway?" 

"Not like you're thinking. I have an emancipation document – not forged, it's really mine – that I can thrust into people's faces if I want. But since the only time I go back to Tenarus is to help runaway slaves, I'm kind of hoping I'll never have to show that document to the police." 

Carr pulled his hands away. "Slaves?" 

"Yeah." Jesse turned around and leaned back against the pillows with an elaborate show of indifference. "They don't mince words in Tenarus. Funny thing is, being a servant in the Dozen Landsteads is worse than being a slave in Tenarus. At least in Tenarus, people aren't born into slavery, slaves are allowed to socialize with masters, and slaves have a chance – a slim chance – of being emancipated by their masters and mistresses, the way I was. And nobody pretends that the slaves are being chained for their own benefit." Jesse's voice turned scornful. 

Carr was silent a while. In some inner part of his mind, he had already begun to suspect that Jesse was his own country's equivalent of a servant; there was no other way to account for the immediate intimacy that servants had showed toward him. But Carr had managed until now to remove from his mind the implications of that fact. 

A man was able to live part of his life as a servant and then be able to pass himself off as a true master. If Jesse could do this with such ease . . . what did that mean? That Carr's parents were right? That all men and women in the world were born equals, with no differences of rank except what they artificially imposed on one another? 

The thought should have been comforting. Instead, Carr felt sick. And he knew why he felt sick. 

"You okay?" As usual, Jesse was all too skilled at picking up on Carr's emotions. 

"Yes, fine." Carr turned his head, under the pretense of placing the bandages and scissors on top of the book. "I'm sorry about what happened to you. I'm glad the story had a happy ending. And it's nice that you want to help others." 

"Is it?" Jesse's voice had turned very quiet. 

"I mean . . . If that's what you feel you have to do . . ." He was stumbling now, trying to figure out why panic was building in him, for surely he had not learned anything tonight that he did not already know. 

He was a freak of nature. His freakishness remained hidden only by the fact that he lived in a society that had built up artificial, damaging barriers to normal human behavior. Once those barriers were removed – once every Landsteader lived with the freedom he deserved – then Carr's freakishness would be exposed for what it was. Every step he took to bring about the emancipation of the servants was one more stick in the building of his own corpse-fire. 

"Hey." Jesse grabbed his arm. "Stop fiddling with those things. Look at me and tell me what's wrong. Gods, are you crying?" 

"Of course not." He hastily palmed away the revealing tear. "I just hate to think of all those men and women who are forced to be servants, and who are exploited by their self-appointed masters. If we had a society where everyone was equals, we wouldn't have runaways, and we wouldn't need Abolitionists. I guess that would put you out of business." Trying to smile, he turned to look at Jesse. 

The other youth still had his hand on Carr's arm. His light-and-dark eyes had grown serious; the lines of his frown creased his forehead, like waves rolling back from the shore. His hand tightened on Carr's arm, causing his biceps to grow so that Carr could see clearly the veins submerged under the skin. The fine, night-dark hair on his chest . . . 

"Oh, sweet blood, no," whispered Carr. 

"'No' what?" Jesse asked, his frown increasing. Then his gaze dropped. "Oh. Right." 

Carr jerked back as though he had been about to touch a sea nettle; his hands ended up in his lap. Too late, he thought bitterly. A sardonic smile had entered Jesse's face. 

"I get you," said the youth. 

"Do you?" Carr's voice was faint. 

"Yeah, it's pretty obvious. 'You want to fuck?' 'You're not my type.' 'You want to fuck?' 'You're not my type.' 'By the way, I was a slave.' Suddenly I'm your type." Jesse reached over and peeled off Carr's hands from his lap, revealing the stiffness there. "Relax. I was a sex slave. I'm used to masters getting turned on when they see me. Besides, I'd already guessed, when I saw the way you looked at Variel." 

"Guessed?" His voice could barely be heard now. 

"That you're one of those masters who can only get a hard-on when you're with a servant. Pretty funny, huh? At first you're not at all attracted to me – and then you find out I once wore service clothes, and suddenly your cock's all hungry." He leaned back further, scrutinizing Carr, and his smile slowly faded. "Okay, maybe not so funny if you're the guy with the terminal case of servant hunger. You haven't gone to bed yet with any of the servants?" 

Carr looked away, staring into the darkness. "No." 

"Because of that act your uncle was talking about? The – whatchamacallit – Abuse of Power Act, forbidding masters from having sex with their servants? Or are you just saving yourself for the right servant?" 

"No." He cleared his throat and tried to speak above a whisper. "It would be wrong to bed a servant. I'd be exploiting him. I don't want to do that." 

The bed moved as Jesse shifted. Carr looked over to see that the other youth was now sitting cross-legged, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his fists, and a smile on his face. "Okay, you know, don't you, that my respect for you just shot up about a hundred miles, right? Tell me you didn't say that only for effect, the way your parents would." 

"No." He shook his head quickly, feeling the tension ease in him at Jesse's unexpected response. "No, I decided this two tri-years ago, when I first realized . . . when I first realized I wasn't normal. I mean, my parents had been talking since I was born about the joys of equality in marriage or in a love-mate bond, and it all sounded wonderful. But when I reached the age where I was having dreams about being intimate in bed with others . . . The dreams were always about males, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, my uncle is only interested in males, and my father told me once that he's only attracted to females, so only being interested in one sex wasn't the problem. It was—" The remaining words stuck in his throat. 

"It's that you were always dreaming about being a master having sex with his servant." Jesse sighed and leaned back. Carr looked at him quickly, wondering whether the tolerance he had shown before – no, not tolerance, _praise_ – would disappear, now that it had sunk in what type of threat Carr presented to his servants. 

"Gods, Carruthers, I'm sorry," Jesse said. "I mean, I've met guys who preferred being on top, and I've met masters who didn't give a damn about whether their slaves were willing to have sex with them or not. Like my first master," he added with a quirk of a smile. "But the situation you're in – not being able to get an erection except when you're a master fucking your servant, and not wanting to exploit your servants . . . Hell. And you're not the type for lifelong chastity." 

"I've already decided that," Carr said swiftly. "I'll stay celibate rather than bed a servant." 

"Nope." Jesse's voice was flat. "Not the type for celibacy. Carr, don't argue with me – I can assess people better than you can. That's part of what I do. I teach new runaways how to be free; you've got to know something about human psychology to do that, because it's one hell of a transition, to go from being a doormat to being a free person." He tilted his head to one side as he looked at Carr. "I hate to point out the obvious – in fact, I wouldn't point this out except that you're about to make a fucking idiot of yourself by trying to be celibate, which will cause you to explode at some point, probably at the cost of one of your servants – but if there are masters in this world who are only turned on by servants, it sort of follows that there are servants in this world who are only turned on by masters. I mean, I'm not speculating here. I've met slaves like that." 

Carr stared down at his shoes, his body as tense as it had been before. "I'd thought of that. There are tales . . . Well, I won't bore you with history lessons. But how would I figure out who these servants were? Any servant might say he wanted to go to bed with me, simply in order to gain my favor or because he was afraid to say no. And I don't have your skill at reading people. I'd probably end up taking someone to bed who hated being with me." 

"Yeah, that's the kicker, ain't it?" As he turned and lay down on his bed, Jesse sighed. "And I can't help you, because I top in bed. Look, give me some time to think about it. Maybe I'll come up with a solution." He closed his eyes. 

Carr hastily rose, collecting his items from the dresser. "I should let you sleep; you've had a rough night. . . . Jesse." 

"Mm?" Jesse didn't open his eyes. 

"Thank you for listening. And for not being shocked." 

A smile touched the corners of Jesse's lips. "No problem. I've got this thing for masters with consciences. Just ask the master who arranged for me to be freed."


	9. Chapter 9

**CHAPTER NINE**

Carr stood in his House's chapel, staring at what was not there. 

His mother's family had always been Traditionalist, but this chapel had been built by a Reformed Traditionalist architect, at a time when Reformed Traditionalist chapels were fashionable, even in Traditionalist homes. Carr had seen pictures of the fifteen-tri-century chapel that had existed in the previous mansion of the House of His Master's Kindness: it had been gaily colored in red, blue, and green, with carvings of the serene landscape of afterdeath that all Landsteaders prayed to avoid, and with mosaics of Remigeus and his master and other famous men of the past. The daring architect had even managed to slip in a small portrait of Celadon and Brun. 

The new chapel was naked of all colors. It had white pillars against white walls, a white pulpit in the middle, and white pews circling the pulpit – pews with short walls around them, to separate each rank from the other. In place of the majestic colored glass that had graced the old chapel – depicting scenes of death, transformation, and rebirth – the new chapel's windows were plain glass, allowing the light to stream in unimpeded. The architect – very daring indeed – had played with the untraditional motif of light as a symbol of transformation, placing delicate gilding on the ceiling to suggest the presence of the sun and stars. That was a Vovimian conceit, but it had been considered acceptable, back in those years before the importing of foreign art became illegal in the Dozen Landsteads. 

Carr had always loved the new chapel. Its understated asceticism spoke more deeply to him than the bright merriment of Traditionalist chapels, though he could appreciate the latter's claim to beauty. He considered his family's chapel to be the most attractive room in the mansion. 

His father, determined to take matters a step further, wished to replace the chapel with apartments for the servants – "A true and living symbol of transformation," he had argued. It was one of the few arguments between the two of them in which Carr had flatly exercised his power of veto. He could not control how his father ran his businesses, but the mansion would one day belong to Carr, at least until his uncle died; in the meantime, his father served only as regent heir and could not make drastic changes to the mansion without Carr's approval. No doubt, once the mansion lay in the servants' hands, the servants would make whatever changes they considered appropriate – but considering the frequency with which the servants slipped into this chapel for private prayer, Carr was not as confident as his father was that they would prefer a living symbol in place of a chapel. 

Carr's father never came to the chapel. Carr's mother, who had fond childhood memories of the place, had hired a chaplain to hold services during the high feast days, until it became clear that Carr's father would not attend such services, offended as he was by the liturgy's references to masters and servants. Now Carr was the only member of the family to visit here, and he was not at all sure why he was able to find a peace here that he found nowhere else. Perhaps it was simply that the plainness of the chapel reminded him of his school. 

His peace on this day, in the week of Spring Youth, was broken by the sound of his father shouting. 

Carr left the chapel hurriedly and rushed past Irene, who had been polishing the masters' stairs but was now staring open-mouthed toward the second floor. 

Carr took the steps two at a time. As he reached the corridor of the masters' quarters, he met Jesse, emerging from the servants' stairwell. Without a word, they both swung into the small hallway that led to the tiniest bedrooms on that storey. 

Carr's father was standing in front of the doorway of one of the bedrooms, the one with the fireplace. His hand was gripping the doorpost hard, as though he were tempted to wrench it out and use it as a weapon. His face was red. Carr opened his mouth to enquire as to the trouble; then he took another step forward and closed his mouth. He could see now what his father had found in the bedroom. 

Sally had received just enough time to fling a bedsheet over her body. Bat had not possessed such luck; he was standing beside the bed, naked as the day he was reborn. 

If he had possessed any sense, he would have been down on his knees. 

"I will not tolerate such sluttish behavior from members of my household," Carr's father said. His voice had finally lowered, but his tone was as enraged as before. "You have taken advantage of my hospitality in a most despicable manner." 

"But, sir . . ." Bat began, and Carr winced. Even he, who was not a servant, knew that any sentence to a master which began with the word "but" was the wrong sentence. 

"What?" snapped Carr's father, for once not correcting the use of the word "sir" to address him. 

Even then, Bat did not heed the warning. "But, sir, you said that we should regard this mansion as our home. At home, before she died, Sally's mother always let us—" 

"This is a home, not a brothel!" roared Carr's father. "You have acted in a shameless manner – both of you." He turned his attention to Sally, who flinched as though she had been slapped. "I will not have my wife and my son corrupted by the sight of your bestial behavior. You will pack your bags—" 

"Oh, sir!" Sally slipped out of the bed, ending up kneeling on the floor next to Carr's father. "Oh, sir, please don't sell us!" 

There was a space of silence as Carr's father looked down at her. Then he said, with careful, deadly slowness, "You are even more shameless than I had thought, seeking to tempt me with your body." 

Sally's face turned scarlet. Bat began to step forward, his expression darkening, but Jesse moved more quickly. Stepping into the room, he picked up Bat's long coat and draped it over Sally's shoulders, helping her to her feet as she fumbled with the buttons. "You're too pretty, that's your problem," he said lightly to Sally. "Even the master of the House isn't immune to your charms, are you, sir?" He underlined the word "sir." 

That word served to bring Carr's father back to his senses. He replied calmly, "This is not the place to discuss such matters. Bat, put your clothes back on, by all that is sacred – my wife will be home at any moment. Both of you, come to my library when you are dressed and packed, and I will give you your certificates of employment." He departed without another word. 

Sally had begun to cry. Bat, white-faced, reached for his trousers. Jesse, showing far more discretion than Carr had known he possessed, stepped into the corridor and closed the door, in order to allow the servants their privacy. 

"Funny thing," said Jesse as he and Carr slowly made their way down the servants' stairs. "I would have sworn that your dad is the one who gave me tips for finding a brothel." 

Carr sighed. "Jesse, I'm really not in the mood for your jokes." 

Jesse cocked his head at Carr. "No? Well, I suppose you have your own ways of letting off steam so that you don't hit the guy who deserves it." 

"Jesse . . ." 

"Okay, interpret that scene for me, then. Is your dad pissed off because Bat fucked Sally while she's still underage?" 

Carr stared at him. There were times when he wondered whether Jesse was one of those aliens from another planet that appeared in scientifiction novels. "She isn't underage. She's old enough to marry. My father is angry simply because she and Bat didn't ask his permission before sleeping together. Don't you know about that rule?" 

"Oh, that one. Yeah." For some reason, this topic seemed to strike home with Jesse; his expression migrated to something halfway between a grin and a grimace. "Okay, deja vu and all that. At least your dad didn't rape Sally, just to show who she belonged to." 

"Jesse, stop making mock!" Carr's temper, which he had kept under tight control till now, began to slip from his grasp. 

Jesse gave him a look, a long look, as they reached the first floor. "You think I'm joking? Gods, if you only knew. . . . Never mind. This isn't helping Sally and Bat. You work on your dad; I'll see whether Sally and Bat have any useful information to offer. We'll meet in your room." And he slipped away, heading up the stairs, leaving Carr with a sudden, devastating reminder that he was not talking to a master. 

o—o—o

Jesse slammed the door behind him so hard that Carr, who had been lying on his own bed, staring at nothing in particular, jumped in place. He looked over at Jesse, who was standing in front of the door with his hands in fists, looking as though he wanted to punch the nearest object. 

"Did you talk to them?" Carr asked, sitting up. "Do they have a place to live till they get their next job?" 

For a moment, he thought Jesse would not reply; the young man was glaring at him as though Carr embodied everything that was wrong with the Dozen Landsteads. Then Jesse walked forward and said, "Move." 

Carr shifted over to make way. Jesse settled down on the bedspread, leaning over to place his elbows on his knees, and his forehead on his palms. "Sally is pregnant." 

_"What?"_ Jerking forward, Carr peered at Jesse's face to see whether he was serious. "How . . . ?" 

Jesse gave a quirk of a smile. "The usual way. You guys don't use birth control here, do you?" 

"Whatever that is, we don't use it." Carr groped for words. "Jesse, that's— If they had received my parents' permission to marry, that would be one thing. Babies come when they aren't expected, everyone knows that. But for an unmarried servant to be with child . . ." His throat tightened. "Jesse, the Bureau will take away her certificate of employment when it finds out." 

"Yeah, she told me." Jesse had his palms over his eyes now. "And Bat says that, when the Bureau finds out he's the father of the child, his certificate will be taken away as well." 

"He could deny it," Carr said quickly. "My father isn't likely to gossip about what he saw." 

"But Sally can't deny she's pregnant. She's desperate enough to have considered getting rid of the kid, but she tells me there are no safe places for abortion here. So sooner or later someone is going to figure out what her swelling belly means. And Bat says he's not going to abandon her – that he'll marry her, even if it means losing his certificate." 

Carr swallowed. "Perhaps they could say that someone else got her pregnant, and Bat was honorable enough to marry her. If they still had one income . . ." 

"Carruthers, your fucking dad _owns_ the Bureau!" Jesse raised his head and turned his blazing eyes toward Carr. "Every single transaction that goes through the Bureau goes over your dad's desk, or didn't you know that? And your dad's not going to let Bat get away with a lie. He's steaming mad at both Bat and Sally." Jesse stood up and whirled round to look at Carr. "What does it mean if their certificates are taken away? Sally cried when I asked her, and Bat just went all white-lipped on me." 

Carr stood up too. His body felt sore, as though he had been pummeled at games all day. "It means prison," he said quietly. "Sally is safe; she's still of apprentice age, and mothers are exempted from the employment laws. But Bat is male and is of journeyman age, so if he isn't employed within a month's time, and if he doesn't have a certificate to show that he's actively seeking employment, he'll be picked up as a vagrant. He'll be sent to prison and won't be released until someone is willing to employ him – which no one will, since he doesn't have a certificate of employment _or_ a good reference from his last master." 

"This place is so fucked up," muttered Jesse. "Okay, I figured it was something like that. I've got to get them over the border." 

"What?" 

Jesse gave an impatient gesture. "Don't give me that wide-eyed, innocent schoolboy look. You know what I've been up to at night. The problem in this case is that Bat tells me has a police record already – he punched a master two years ago who was harassing a maid. Ended up in prison for a year. I'm surprised your parents didn't know that when they hired him." 

"They probably did," Carr replied, his fingernails digging into the dresser that he was leaning back against. "They like to take in such cases." 

Jesse snorted. "So that the undeserving poor will be grateful to their employers for giving them their final chance? No wonder your dad blew his top; he was expecting Bat to go around grovelling at your parents' feet till the end of his life, not act like an Egalitarian. . . . Anyway, Bat has a police record, so I can't sail him over the Bay to the Third Landstead, like we did the others; he'll have to leave the Dozen Landsteads. The problem will be getting Bat and Sally past the border guards. You're a border guard, so tell me: Will the guards have access to Bat's police record?" 

"They don't need to have access." The heaviness in Carr's chest increased. "Any servant who wants to leave the Dozen Landsteads, even briefly, has to be cleared by three bureaus within the House of Government . . . including the Bureau of Employment." 

Jesse said something pithy under his breath. "And I haven't reached the point yet where I've made contact with whatever forgers you have in this country." 

"Could you . . . send them to another nation by boat?" Carr said hesitantly. 

Jesse raised his eyebrows. "One of the boats you inspect? Are you volunteering to help smuggle them over the border?" Then, as Carr began struggling for a reply, Jesse waved the idea away. "Thanks, but it's a bad idea. You only inspect incoming boats, so you wouldn't know: the inspection of outgoing ocean-bound vessels is twice as thorough. I couldn't manage it, even with your help." 

"Well," said Carr, trying to keep relief out of his voice, "what about other types of boats? Some of the servants are watermen, and if you enlisted their help . . ." 

To his surprise, Jesse flashed him a smile. "You have the right sort of mind for this business. But no, I'd be sending all the runaways out of the Dozen Landsteads by boat if it was that easy. It's not. The fishing boats can't manage transoceanic crossings, and the coastal waters at the border with Yclau are too heavily patrolled by robocoptor patrols." 

"Up north?" suggested Carr. "You could sail them up-Bay. I hear that the Vovimian border guards are fierce, but you could travel east on the Landstead & Akbar canal. Akbar is always seeking immigrants; Sally and Bat could settle there or in any of the other northeastern nations." 

"The canal has been drained," Jesse countered. "The Eleventh Landstead didn't see any point in maintaining it, because the northeastern nations depend on rocket-ports and monorail stations for travel. No, Sally and Bat are going to have to stay closer to home. I'll send them to the First Landstead." 

Carr must have gaped, for Jesse smirked at him. "Unorthodox solution, huh?" 

"I just thought . . . Don't masters in the First Landstead check police records when hiring?" 

"When hiring servants, yeah. But the Act of Celadon and Brun was never revoked there – servants can apply to be masters. And servants don't need a clean police record in order to apply for mastership. Nice loophole; we'd use it more often if it weren't so damn hard to get anyone into the First Landstead." 

"But you can do it?" The hope was as painful to Carr's chest as the desperation had been. 

"Yeah, maybe. How old are you, anyway?" 

Taken off-guard, Carr said, "Old enough. I mean," he added, blushing, as Jesse laughed, "six tri-years old. Eighteen sun-circuits." 

"Is that the age of majority here? I know it's eighteen in Yclau." 

"No, seven – twenty-one sun-circuits – is the age of adulthood in the Dozen Landsteads. We still follow the old laws. But seventeen sun-circuits is journeyman age; I received certain rights when I reached that age." 

"Sure, I can guess what one of those rights is." Jesse smirked as Carr felt his face turn furnace-hot. "What about money? Do you have money of your own?" 

Carr hesitated; for the first time, he guessed where this questioning was headed. "A little." 

"Don't act all humble and servantish; we don't have time for that. Your parents are rich – are you? Because it's going to take a fucking big bribe to get Sally and Bat into the First Landstead." 

"Look, I can't . . ." Carr's voice faltered; Jesse's eyes had turned as hard as dark pebbles. 

"'Can't'?" His voice was hard too. 

"The money . . . It was given to me as a gift by my parents. They said that they wouldn't ask me what I did with it. But . . . well, you've seen how good they are at keeping their promises. If they should ask . . ." 

"So lie to them. It's easy. I do it all the time, if you hadn't noticed." Jesse's voice had turned flat. 

"It's not that simple. I mean, Sally and Bat are one thing . . . But if any of that money should go astray . . . And it's not like I'm going to turn you in to the police, but if I were in your place . . ." His voice trailed off; the anger in Jesse's eyes had turned to contempt. 

"Let me put your fucking mealy-mouthed speech into plain language," Jesse said carefully. "You're an Egalitarian, just like your parents. You think Abolitionists are the scum of the earth. So you'd rather let an honorable young man spend the rest of his life in prison, and a pregnant sixteen-year-old die of starvation, than give any money to the Abolitionists, for fear that a few cents of your precious fortune might 'go astray.' Right?" 

Carr said nothing. His heart was pounding, and his right hand ached from clamping the edge of the dresser. After a minute, Jesse snorted. "Right. I should have guessed that your generosity was all surface show, like your parents'. Don't worry, 'Master Carruthers,' I won't bother your tender conscience again with such matters. I've met your sort before." 

And he departed the room, leaving the chandelier shaking with the force of the slammed door, and Carr shaking with the force of his words.


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER TEN**

The wind shoved hard against the boat, causing it to shudder and creak. Outside, the waves rose, crested, and threw their power forth with full fury, pulling every object they encountered to the depths of the Bay. 

Carr was very glad that Rowlett's shantyboat was on land. Carefully closing the door before it should be torn out of his hand, he turned back to his father's liegeman, saying, "I hope the fleet will be all right." 

"This sort of sou'easter don't go far north," Rowlett said with firmness. "It'll tear its heart out 'fore it reaches as far as the eel grounds." Sitting on his bed, he leaned his back against the wall, being careful to place his head to the right of where his rifle lay on hooks upon the wall. The top of his head just brushed the shelf above, which held a mishmash of objects: a box of crackers, a decoy so real that it looked as though it would quack at any moment, and glass jars holding various dried items. 

Carr nodded, relieved; he had no need to question Rowlett's weather sense. Walking over to the stove, he checked on the progress of the teakettle as he said, "It must be frustrating for you, being all cooped up like this." 

"Ah, well." Rowlett waved away the remark with his good arm. His other arm was bandaged, still recovering from the gunshot wound he had received during the naval pursuit upon the Honga River. "Gives me a nice vacation, you might say." 

It was the closest Rowlett ever came to admitting that he disliked the tasks that his liege-master assigned him. Carr had witnessed the fights between his father and Rowlett at the time that his father first began sending his fleet into Third Landstead territory – if one could call it a fight where the liegeman began every sentence with the words, "With respect," and kept his eyes dipped the whole time. It was probably the safest thing he could have done; Carr's father, with the instincts long bred into him in his youth, was unlikely to hit a man who was acting as though he were a humble servant. 

But it had not made any difference in the end. Rowlett had been forced by his liege-master to break the high law, not once but many times. 

"Something on your mind, Master Carr?" 

Rowlett's voice broke into Carr's thoughts, and he realized that he had been standing in front of the whistling teakettle for some time. He reached out to seize the kettle handle and then hissed, snatching his burnt fingers back. 

Rowlett was at his side at once. "Petroleum jelly's above the washbowl," he said succinctly. "That bad enough that it needs bandaging?" 

Carr shook his head, sucking his fingers. "Just cold water, I think." He turned away. Ignoring the barrel of lukewarm water, he opened the door and thrust his hand out into the cool rain. 

Behind him, Rowlett bustled around, pulling objects off the shelves on the wall next to the stove. "Corn syrup?" he asked. 

"Yes, please," Carr replied, feeling a familiar sort of calm descend upon him. Then, deciding that it really wasn't fair for him to take advantage of his father's liegeman in this manner, he closed the door and turned, saying, "Let me do that, Rowlett. Your arm is still bad." 

"Not so bad that I ain't able to pour a couple cups of tea." Rowlett's servant dialect became more pronounced, as it always did when he was alone with Carr. "Now, you sit yourself down, Master Carr. This won't take but a minute." 

Carr had no memories of the days when Rowlett had been a servant in the House of His Master's Kindness, but he had always envisioned Rowlett as being a servant somewhat like Carr's old nurse: the type that respectfully bullied masters into doing the things they ought to do. It was a shame, really, that Rowlett had never been able to transform that talent into a weapon to turn Carr's father onto the straight path. 

But maybe he had tried and failed, Carr reflected as he sat down on the lid-covered toilet seat next to the door, watching Rowlett pour corn syrup into the tea cups. Carr's father was a very stubborn man. 

Carr tried again. "Shall I light another lamp? It's getting rather dark." 

Rowlett nodded. "Would be right nice if you did that, Master Carr. Thank you." 

Carr rose so hastily that he nearly bumped his arm into the saw hanging on the wall beside him. Next to the saw were the pegs for Rowlett's overcoat and hat, and above the pegs jutted out a high shelf with lamps, extra kerosene, and matches. Carr took one of the lamps over to the table next to the bed and then fumbled with the fuel and matches, feeling as awkward as a culling boy on his first day at work. 

Suddenly Rowlett was at his side. "No, no, master – that's one of the old-fashioned lamps. You got to cut the wick first." 

"Oh?" said Carr weakly and stepped aside to let Rowlett do his work. He had a sudden vision of himself in the summer kitchen, making a mess of the servants' carefully ordered workspace. He made a small noise of distress. 

Rowlett looked cautiously back over his shoulder. "Something the matter, sir?" 

Realizing that Rowlett could not know the cause of distress in his liege-master's son, Carr said hastily, "No, that's fine. Go right ahead. I'm interfering." 

"Ah." Rowlett's expression cleared. He turned his attention back to the wick. After a moment, he said, "I heard things have been a bit messy upstairs, in the mansion." 

Carr had wandered back to the stove. He stared at its pipe, which poked its way through the wall to send smoke outside. "My father sacked Bat and Sally." 

"Heard that." Rowlett appeared at his elbow, offering him a cup of syrup-sweetened tea. 

Carr took it but did not drink. "How can he do such things, Rowlett? And how can my mother just stand by and let him?" 

"'Stead of interfering?" Rowlett gave him a small smile. "You ain't so different from either of your folks, you know." 

Carr stared down at his cup, unable to speak. The shantyboat shuddered once more as fresh waves crashed onto the beach, a few yards away. The air inside the boat was close and damp. 

Rowlett took him by the elbow and gently guided him over to the room's only chair, next to the table. "You want to sit down, sir? You're looking a bit peaky." 

Carr sat down because it was easier than finding an excuse not to. He placed his tea cup and saucer next to Rowlett's empty tobacco-pipe and stared at the objects, trying to make sense of his muddled thoughts. "I just don't understand them," he heard himself say. "I don't understand them at all. How—?" His throat tightened. "How could you pledge your loyalty to someone like my father, Rowlett? Was it just that you wanted to be a master? Or that you were afraid my father would throw you out if you refused the rank he offered you?" 

"Well, now," said Rowlett in an uneasy voice, "I can't rightly say, after all these years." 

The liegeman's tone snapped Carr out of his muddle-mindedness. He looked over his shoulder, saying quickly, "I'm sorry, Rowlett. That was utterly unfair of me, asking you questions like that." 

Rowlett smiled. He was leaning back against the washstand, wiping his hands with a towel. "Then again," he said, "there's times when you ain't nothing like your folks at all. You're your own man, entirely your own." 

What he meant, Carr knew, was that his father would never have made an apology like that. Carr held his breath, trying to prevent himself from asking the same questions a second time. 

Rowlett carefully placed the towel back on its peg, saying, "Don't know whether you've ever seen pictures of your mama when she was young." 

"I'm told she was pretty," Carr said cautiously as he scooted his chair over so that he could watch Rowlett more easily. 

"Wasn't just pretty. Was a beauty – the handsomest girl in this landstead." Rowlett fiddled with the towel, adjusting it. 

Carr said slowly, "Were you in love with her?" 

"Maybe a bit." Rowlett's mouth quirked into a smile. "Maybe a lot. Every man and boy was, that came within sight of her. Wasn't just her looks – she was vivacious, full of fire. She had beaus lining up from here to the capital, and on up to Bay Beach. She could have married any master she wanted – but she didn't want none of them. Prideful, they called her." 

"And was she?" Carr asked, fascinated by this new perspective on his mother. He had seen photographs of her when she was young; she hadn't looked prideful to him, merely sad. 

Rowlett shook his head as he turned back. "Not her. A little too shy, if anything. But she had some stubbornness to her too, and she couldn't quite see the point of the life she was living. 'There must be more to life than an endless round of parties,' she said to me once. 'I just can't figure out what I should be doing instead. I wish I could meet someone who would show me.'" 

"And then she met my father," Carr said slowly. 

"That she did. Oh, he was no catch – no catch at all, in the eyes of most folk. Handsome, yeah. Titled, yeah. But his family was poor as third-rankers by then, and he didn't even have his family's good name, 'cause he'd gone off on his own way. He didn't have a word for what he was in those days – just knew that it was wrong, the way everyone was treating the servants. Knew that there had to be a better way. But no one around him would take any notice of what he said." 

"Except my mother," Carr said in a soft voice. 

Rowlett nodded as he went over to fetch his own tea. "'Cept her. They met at a party, and the minute they got talking, it was like the world had opened thrice as big for both of them. They was made for each other, it seemed. . . . Least, it seemed that way to them. Your granddaddy, he had other ideas." 

"I remember my father said once that my mother's father wasn't happy about him courting my mother." 

Rowlett snorted. "That's putting it mild. Your granddaddy was sort of cautious at the start, creeping up on the idea of how maybe your father's title was good enough reason for him to be a suitor to your mama, since she seemed so dead set on seeing him. But your father weren't ever one to be less than outspoken, and he made clear what he thought of how the servants are treated in the Dozen Landsteads. Minute your granddaddy heard that, he exploded like a steamer's boiler – ordered your father never to set foot in this House again. Told your mama she wasn't to see him ever, no more." 

"And did she obey him?" Carr asked, his tea now completely forgotten in his entrancement at the tale. 

Rowlett snorted again. "Didn't I just say she's stubborn? Us out in the fleet, we was making wagers on how long it would be 'fore the elopement came round. . . . But then your granddaddy died." 

"And my uncle inherited this House," Carr said. 

"Not for long. Your great-granddaddy died too, not long after, and his title of High Master went to your uncle. So your uncle, he was in a sad fix. He needed an heir, didn't want to marry to produce that heir himself, but your mother was insisting she'd die 'fore she married anyone 'cept your daddy. And there was your daddy, insisting to your uncle's face that, if he had control over the landstead, he'd abolish the ranks of master and servant and make everyone equal. Oh, it was a trying time for your uncle. Don't suppose he got no sleep those first triple of months." 

"But he let my mother marry my father," Carr said, running his finger along the back of the wood chair. 

Rowlett nodded. He was still standing against the washbasin, the back of his head reflected in the mirror over the bowl. "That he did. He made a fair jag of it, your uncle did – saw a bad harvest and decided he'd make the best of it he could. He let your mama marry – but only on condition that your daddy was regent, not heir. And made your father agree that, once you was of age, you'd come live with your uncle." 

Carr nodded. "My father told me about their negotiations, at the time of my parents' marriage. I suppose my uncle was hoping that, despite everything, he'd be able to persuade me not to be an Egalitarian like my father." 

Rowlett stared down at his tea, swallowed it in a single gulp, and then set the tea aside. "Now, I've never been one for politics, and a man's faith is his own, that's what I say. So I don't go meddling with such matters. Thing is, though, I don't know if you realize how fierce your folks' love is – not just for themselves, but for the servants. Everyone around them at the time, they made the mistake of thinking this was a simple tale of two lover-birds wanting to marry. Wasn't that simple – wasn't that simple at all. Your daddy, he wouldn't have married the prettiest girl in the landstead – nor her money – if she hadn't wanted what he wanted. And your mama wouldn't have given him the time of day if he wasn't set on freeing the servants. Oh, you should have seen her in those days, her face bright, talking of the days to come when the servants' chains'd be broken and they could have the freedom to do all the things that any master or mastress can do from the day they're born." 

"She's still like that," Carr said in a low voice. "My father too. It's not . . . Rowlett, I've never been ashamed of my parents for their ideals. It's just . . ." 

Rowlett turned round and began washing his cup, using water from the pitcher, and soap from the shelf under the mirror. "Your folks ain't always so smart at making decisions about their own folk. Any servant in this House would say the same – any liegeman too. But you know, we all make mistakes, Master Carr. Best you remember that, 'fore the time comes when you need that knowledge." 

Carr stared at the chair back. "I'm only six tri-years old. I won't be making my own decisions for another tri-year – at least, not any decisions that aren't supervised by my father or my House Master at school." 

"Well, then." Rowlett reached for the towel again. "You got plenty of time. You're lucky you ain't like your daddy and mama, having to decide all at once what to do, back when they was your age." 

Carr said nothing. Outside, the Bay howled – a lonely sound, like a Bay retriever lost in a marsh, trying to find its way home. 

o—o—o

Spring Youth turned to Spring Manhood, ripe as the strawberries growing in the dependency garden. The forsythia shrubs, imported with great expense from an Yclau colony, had shed the last of their golden petals, but now the brilliant-petaled native azalea bushes took their pride of place on the lawn of Cliffsdale Mansion. The nearby woods were filled with darting birds, seeking food for their newborn. And down at the beach, the fleet returned from its eeling. 

Carr's father promptly sent them out to scrape crabs. Fortunately, the scraping grounds in the Second Landstead had not yet been fully depleted; there would be no opportunity for the House of His Master's Kindness to come into conflict again with the Third Landstead's heirship House – at least, not until Carr was safely ensconced in school during the autumn term. In the meantime, mindful of his duties to his school masters – who always seemed more than a little surprised that a lad of his rank would bother to do his lessons – Carr took his schoolbooks outside and spent long afternoons sitting in an isolated spot on the beach, listening with half an ear to the sound of the flatties, doryboats, punts, and skiffs returning with their harvests of blue crabs. 

He rarely saw Jesse any more. To his surprise, the young foreigner had not immediately packed his bag and left after their argument. Carr supposed that Jesse regarded this mansion as a convenient base for his operations. Carr began to wonder whether he himself had ever been anything more than a convenient way for Jesse to receive free lodgings. 

Fortunately, his parents did not notice the estrangement between their son and his guest. His father had reached the final stages of galley-proofing his book, which meant he spent most of his time at home with blue pencil in hand, squinting at the long sheets of paper from the printers, only occasionally emerging with the blank look of a diving canvasback who has forgotten that anything exists on the surface of the water. His mother, released from her work of reading aloud to her husband, had taken it into her head to redecorate the servants' bedrooms, which meant that she spent most of her time creating messes that the servants had to clean up at the end of their long days. 

Carr watched all this with new eyes. With Rowlett's story weaving itself still in his head, he noticed – as he had never really noticed before – that his father received no visitors, other than an occasional Egalitarian who had come to ask some favor from the highest-ranked Egalitarian in the landstead. His mother – who had been the most beautiful woman in the Second Landstead, and whose beaus had been lined up from the capital to Bay Beach – received no visitors at all; nor did she visit anyone. 

Neither of his parents complained of this fact; nor had they ever. Their thoughts were firmly centered only on one matter: the day when they should bring freedom to the downtrodden servants of the Second Landstead. 

Or perhaps not merely one matter, for on the few occasions when his father emerged from his galley-proofing, it was inevitably to ask Carr how his work was going at the Solomons Island Harbor, or whether he needed any assistance at schoolwork, or whether he had any unmet needs. And his mother, while clearly endeavoring not to hover over him, always seemed to find excuses to give him some trinket that had come her way: a shell with mother-of-pearl gleaming on the inside, the empty halves of fragile blue eggs still nestled in their nest. In this manner, Carr began to grasp just how much courage and love it had taken his parents to allow their only son the freedom to leave and make his own way in the world, rather than remain their companion in exile. 

And with this realization came the knowledge that he supposed came to most journeymen eventually: the awareness that his parents were not computers, making static judgments and releasing their carefully calculated results. Rather, his parents were human beings, just as capable as he was of making mistakes, and just as much in need of guidance from wiser men and women. 

Even so, nothing prepared him for what came next.


	11. Chapter 11

**CHAPTER ELEVEN**

Carr was having a bad evening. He had spent the previous night tossing and turning and awaking sweat-laden after his dreams of bed-service. And he wasn't even dreaming of Variel. 

The day had only grown worse after that, though he couldn't say why. The day had been no different than other days this week. Jesse had turned up at the breakfast table as usual, flashing his newspaper at his oblivious audience, grinning sardonically and making sharp-tongued remarks to everyone in the room. 

Except Carr. He never looked in the direction of Carr. 

Then there had been work. In the exhaustion of a long morning, he had marked the landing papers of a Vovimian lord in such a manner that, within minutes of his disembarkation onto Solomons Island, the lord had been arrested by the police as an unmarked servant. The lord had been taken to the tattoo office, protesting loudly that his government would declare war upon the Dozen Landsteads for this insult. The tattoo officials, more discerning than the police, had sent him to the House of Government to have his papers corrected. The High Master's reprimand to the border guards had followed swiftly, through government courier. 

And Carr was told none of this. He only knew because he had overheard two other border guards gossiping about the incident. When Carr went to his supervisor to apologize, the supervisor had merely said, in a distant manner, "Mistakes happen." 

Now here he was again, where he always was at the end of the evening, sipping tea he had been fetched and staring at the fire that had been built for him. He was in a rut. He was spiralling downwards, falling ever further back from the progress of his transformation, and he had no idea how to stop the decline. 

Gradually, he became aware that a new voice was speaking in the next room. 

He carefully set down his cup, went to the door, and opened it. His mother, dressed in her finest evening gown, was pulling ingredients, willy-nilly, off the shelves. 

"—had the most wonderful idea for a pie," she was saying brightly. "I couldn't wait till tomorrow to try it!" 

Millie, who had just finished scrubbing the last of the day's pots and pans and plates and cups and silverware, glared daggers at the back of Carr's mother. Irene, who had evidently accompanied her mastress back from her bedroom, was yawning into her fist. 

Cook simply looked appalled. "Ma'am," she said hesitantly, "it will take some time to heat the oven. Perhaps, if you think about the recipe overnight—" 

"Oh, don't call me ma'am," replied Carr's mother, struggling with a heavy bag of flour. "We're all friends here. You needn't worry; I'll take care of everything. If you could just show me where the measuring cups are, Cook – and Irene, I think I'll need my shawl. It's a bit chilly in here. Oh, hello, Variel; I hope I'm not— Dear me." This, as the bag of flour fell to the floor, burst open, and scattered onto everything within reach – except, by pure chance, his mother. "Millie," said his mother to the scullery girl, who was frantically trying to pat away the flour on her dress, which had just received its weekly cleaning, "if you could bring a mop and bucket – there's a dear. Cook, do we have any more flour I can—?" 

"For fuck's sake, woman, leave it alone!" 

Everyone jumped. Standing at the open doorway to the kitchen was Jesse, whose sardonic smile was nowhere to be seen. He glared at Carr's mother. 

"Can't you see that you're screwing up these people's lives?" he told her. "They want to go to bed, and you're keeping them up to fetch your shawl and light your oven and clean up the messes you make for them! The gods only know what you've got prepared for Variel to do; it'll probably be dawn before you let your servants go to bed. And then they'll have to be up a half hour later, to fix your breakfast so that you can eat it in your fancy dining room that your maid will have to spend the day cleaning— Oops, you don't have a dining-room maid, do you? You fired her and the footman. And your husband hasn't bothered to replace them. That means everyone here has been doing twice the amount of work they did in the past . . . and you want to keep them awake all night so you can make a fucking _pie_!" 

Carr's mother was crying now, weeping silently into a lace handkerchief she had crammed against her mouth. Jesse continued relentlessly, "All that you ever do is create messes in the kitchen which your servants have to clean up. And then your husband and son have to pretend that they like your awful food." 

Carr, who had been standing frozen at the doorway to the back room, opened his mouth, but before he could decide what to say, Jesse concluded, "If you really want to help your servants, pay them decent wages and stop trying to dictate their private lives. Let them live where they want and sleep with whoever they want. And stop fucking trying to pretend that you and your husband are your servants' equals, because you're not. You two are their tyrants." 

"Excuse me." 

It was like hearing the whoosh of a heliograph pyre as it is lit, creating a flame that, once properly directed by a mirror, will be seen for miles. Everyone jumped again except Jesse, who stood very still, as though a gun had been placed against his back. Then he slowly turned. 

Carr's father, whose face had turned so choleric that it was practically black, surveyed the room silently before saying, "This is the last straw." 

"Benjamin!" His mother, sensing rescue, rushed toward her husband. "Oh, my dearest, I've made such a mess here—" 

"Nonsense, sweet one." Even at the heights of his fury, Carr's father was still able to smile at his wife and place an arm tenderly around her back. "All that you did was drop a bit of flour. The rest of this mess" – he surveyed the shaken servants again – "comes from other causes." 

"Hey!" said Jesse, stepping forward. "None of this is their fault. I'm the one who opened my big mouth—" 

"I'm well aware, _Master_ Jesse, of how your cruel comments have made my wife miserable for the past weeks. Since you were my son's guest-friend, I thought it best to let him deal with the matter. But now I would appreciate it if you would allow me to deal with my own household matters in my own way . . . since you are a guest here." 

They confronted each other, the Landsteader and the foreigner, neither willing to break their stare. Carr's mother had turned to press her face against her husband's shoulder; she was still crying. Carr, aware of what could happen if his father entirely lost control, began to step forward. 

But it seemed that, for once, Jesse could make the right decision on his own. The visitor shrugged. "Your House, your rules," he said, with barely veiled irony. "I'll leave you to conduct the House of His Master's Kindness in whatever way that Egalitarians usually do." 

He left, closing the door behind him. Cook and Irene and Millie stared at the closed door in the same manner that ladies in Celadon's time must have stared if their champion deserted them on a day of dire need. Variel's gaze switched over to Carr. 

Carr thought again of speaking, but remained silent as his father said to the servants, "I have been very patient with you. You were given the privilege of participating in a magnificent experiment: the first Egalitarian House in the Dozen Landsteads, the House that may shape this nation's future. And how have you reacted to this gift? By sulking and skulking, by sniggering behind our backs, by sarcastically calling us master and mastress – yes, even you, Variel." He pointed at his silent valet. "I've heard how you address my son when you think I'm not listening." 

In all honor, he could not allow that remark to pass without protest. "Father, he's not making mock at me, and I don't mind—" 

"I know, Carr." His father's voice turned suddenly gentle, as it always did when Benjamin Carruthers addressed his son or wife. "I know that you've also been patient with the servants' insolence. But when it reaches the point at which all of the servants stand by and do nothing while a stranger reduces your mother to tears . . . It's time for a fresh start." 

Variel stiffened; Cook grasped hard a nearby chair; Irene paled; Millie gasped. They all knew what "a fresh start" meant. 

"Benjamin, no!" His mother raised her face from her husband's shoulder. "They've lived here all their lives. And Variel . . . Variel was the one who persuaded my brother to give his consent to our marriage. He's always been completely faithful to you. You _can't_ sell his certificate of employment." 

Carr's father smiled at her. "Sweet one, there's no question of my doing anything against your will. We are equal partners in all enterprises. But think past your tears for a moment. The servants have been giving clear indication, for a long time now, that they're unhappy working in an Egalitarian House. If that's the case, why force them to do the sort of work that makes them miserable? Better that they find a House they're best suited for; then we'll be able to hire servants who are truly committed to the cause of emancipating the servants." 

Carr's mother hesitated, biting her lip. She always had a fragile look about her at times like this. Her maid, seeing an opening, stepped forward and said hoarsely, "Ma'am, please don't sell us. I like living here—" 

"'Ma'am,'" interrupted Carr's father. "You see? Even at this moment, the servants can't think of us in any manner except as their betters. They've been corrupted by our societal traditions – even Millie and those two we dismissed, young as they are. But there are Egalitarian servants out there who would jump at the chance to help us bring about change in the Dozen Landsteads. We'd be free to help them." 

Carr's father had erased, in a few words, the image of the servants in front of him, replacing them with a new, enticing lure of helping others in need. Irene was making strangled sobs now, and Cook's chin trembled, but Carr's mother noticed none of this; she was looking deeply into the eyes of her husband. "I trust your judgment, my dearest," she said. "If you think this is best . . ." 

"I do." Carr's father quickly ushered her outside. "Now go dry your tears, sweet one; we'll make up a list tonight of the qualities we seek in our new servants. —Variel." As Carr's mother moved out of earshot, Benjamin Carruthers's voice turned harsh. "I want the servants' belongings packed and the servants ready to leave when I give word. See to it." 

His voice was that of a master disciplining an ill-trained servant. Watching him from where he stood frozen, Carr felt an ache in his chest. If his father could only hear himself, could only see his own expression, then he would be able to recognize how far his actions lay from his ideals. 

All of the servants were looking at Carr now. They were expecting him to speak up; he was their final hope. Variel, who had not said a word yet, kept his gaze level on his master's son. 

And Carr said nothing. He said nothing for a reason that nobody in that House could have known, not even his father and mother. He kept silent, lest worse disaster fall. 

His father and mother had entered the main building. The servants' gazes were upon him. Carr murmured, "Excuse me," and left the building where, for so many years, the servants had fetched his tea and built his fire. 

Outside, Carr carefully closed the dependency door and leaned on it. Nobody was in sight, but he could feel, upon the door's wood, the warmth of where Jesse had leaned as he was eavesdropping on Benjamin Carruthers's final words. 

o—o—o

The door of the guest room stood ajar. Carr hesitated, wondering whether he should knock at so early a morning hour. Then he pushed the door open. 

Jesse was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. There was no sign that he had slept overnight. His shirt was unbuttoned and open, revealing that he wore no undervest. His chest hair shone glossy under the gaslight. Without moving his gaze from the ceiling, he said, "Okay, fair enough – I screwed up too. Close the door, for the gods' sake; I don't want your parents eavesdropping." 

"They've gone out for the day." As he spoke, Carr closed the door behind himself. "Mother has sailed up-Bay to visit one of her sisters, and Father is taking the certificates of employment down to the Bureau this morning. He says he wants the house-servants out of his home by the end of today." Carr hesitated, then decided that this wasn't the moment to reveal that his father had expressed similar sentiments concerning Jesse. 

"Fuck." Jesse's response was unusually quiet; his gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. "What about recommendations? Will he give the servants good recommendations?" 

Carr swallowed before saying, "He let my mother write the recommendations." 

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck_!" Jesse pulled himself up, swung his legs over, and sat on the side of the bed, running his hand through his hair. He still had not looked in Carr's direction. "No chance they'll change their minds?" 

Carr shook his head. "Father is also submitting a request for six new servants – two extra to replace Sally and Bat as well. The Bureau will probably be able to find new servants for my parents before the day is over." 

"Uh-huh." Jesse seemed distracted, as though his mind was on matters other than Carr's words. He stared at the dresser next to him, painting lines on it with his finger. Then he rose to his feet, walked over to Carr, and grabbed him. 

Startled, Carr stood still as Jesse slipped his hand into Carr's jacket. The hand emerged with Carr's wallet in it. 

"Listen," said Jesse with the slightly desperate voice of a fish-merchant dealing with a master whom he knows beforehand will not be willing to pay fair market price. "This money is just spare change for you. I've seen the way you throw it around. A solidus here to pay for flowers grown in the Twelfth Landstead. A solidus there to pay for a box of imported sweet-meats. . . . You go through at least twenty solidi a week in tips alone. Now, look . . ." Jesse took out the notes in the wallet and fanned them open. "You've got forty-three solidi here – a year's wages for a scullery girl, or a couple of weeks' worth of tips for you. If you dropped this on the pavement, you'd never notice it was gone. But with these forty-three solidi, I _might_ be able to save the careers of four servants, including your father's former valet, who you have the hots for. That could give you some nice fantasies in your dreams about him grovelling at your feet in eternal gratitude. Is that worth it to you? A lifetime's worth of great jerk-off fantasies, only for the price of two weeks' worth of tips?" He thrust the cash into Carr's face, his own expression dark with anger. 

Carr's ears were burning by the time Jesse travelled halfway through the speech. He could not trust himself to speak. He gave a jerk of a nod. 

Jesse snorted and pocketed the cash. He tossed the wallet back into Carr's hands. "Here you go, big spender. Consider your money invested in a worthy cause." 

o—o—o

With nothing else to do, Carr spent the late afternoon in his father's library. He rarely visited there during the spring; the school masters usually only assigned light reading over the spring holiday, knowing that most of their students would be immersed in the social whirl of pageants, balls, masques, plays, concerts, and general revelry. All of this led up to the last week of the high holiday season, Spring Manhood, and especially the final day of Spring Manhood. Even in Yclau and Mip and Vovim, which followed the newer Tri-National Calendar, thousands of people would be celebrating the final day of the spring season, just before the Summer Waning began. 

Kneeling on the floor as he sorted through the box he normally kept hidden and locked behind his scientifiction novels – the one place in the mansion that his parents would never look, since both of them eschewed novel-reading – Carr listened with half an ear as the clock ticked its way to six o'clock, the first hour of the evening and, by ancient tradition, the first hour of the new day. Throughout the Midcoast nations of Vovim, Mip, Yclau, and the Dozen Landsteads, six o'clock would be the signal for cheers, champagne, and shouts of joy. Even the Landstead servants celebrated the final day of the holiday weeks between the Masters' Festival and Spring Manhood, making speeches – not always cynical – about the good masters and mastresses who had owned them over the years. In households throughout the Dozen Landsteads, six o'clock would be the time when music and dancing began in the servants' quarters, while rich food was consumed, a present from the masters and mastresses. A full day of feasting and rest from work would begin. 

The clock chimed six times. The House of His Master's Kindness remained silent. The watermen and their families, forbidden from participating in a festival that Carr's parents had declared went against Egalitarian ideals, rested in their shantyboats in preparation for another day's work. The house-servants, in their tiny rooms, were as quiet as men and women under sentence of execution. Having returned home, Carr's parents had retired to bed early, "worn out," as Carr's father had put it with a wry smile, "by all the fuss." 

Carr picked up the three-ring binder he had taken from the box and flipped through the dividers, staring at each label, as though he could convince himself thereby that he had a right to the dreams those labels embodied. Then he let the binder slip to the floor beside him. He was still in school. After that, he would be at university. Not until he graduated, at age twenty-one, would he have to make his decision. 

The binder stared up at him, like a question being asked. 

The floor vibrated as someone closed the front door of the mansion. Carr stood up quickly, snatching up the binder. A minute later, Jesse entered the room. 

"I saw the light in here," he explained as he tossed a stack of papers onto the table next to the door. "Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of four servants." 

Carr stared at him blankly. "What?" 

"I managed to catch your father's head honcho at the Bureau before he left work. Serving as your agent, I bought the house-servants' certificates of employment. I also managed to convince him to hold off on hiring new servants for your parents until they've decided whether they'd be willing to make do with your own servants." 

"But Jesse . . ." Carr's hand tightened on the binder. "I can't own servants. I'm going back to school the morning after tomorrow." 

"No, you aren't. You're taking the summer term off, because your parents can't be trusted to care for goldfish, much less human beings." As he finished pulling off his coat and tossing it onto a chair, Jesse cocked his head and regarded Carr. "Don't look so woeful. Your school is hardly likely to expel the heir to the Second Landstead, if you happen to have a family emergency that needs to be dealt with. And this is only temporary. With the stunning recommendations you'll give your new servants, they should have no problems finding positions in other households. They'll all be off your hands by the time the autumn term begins. Unless, of course, you're not willing to dip into that precious fund of yours and pay their wages till the end of the summer." Jesse's voice turned acid. 

"I . . ." Carr stared at the certificates, each with its three holes punched neatly on the side. "Jesse, I . . . I don't know whether I can do this." 

"Oh, for the gods' sake!" Suddenly Jesse's explosive temper was back. "I'm not asking you to fund a servant rebellion! I'm just asking you to temporarily take care of a few people who have served your family loyally for years! What the fuck is _wrong_ with you? I thought you'd been daydreaming about being a master. You should be jumping with fucking _joy_ at this opportunity to order people around." 

Carr stared down at the binder he was still clutching in his hands. The certificates were only two yards away. All he needed to do was take a few steps. 

"Damn it, Carruthers, _listen_ to me!" Jesse wrenched the binder from Carr's grip and threw it on the ground. The binder flew open, and its metal tongs snapped apart. The labelled dividers fanned out. 

Staring down at the dividers, Jesse was silent a minute. Then he said in a mild voice, "You know, every time I think I've got you figured out, you change your pattern, like some fucking cephalopod. Did you make these tonight?" 

"No." 

"How long ago?" 

"Two tri-years ago." He swallowed before adding, "When I began having those dreams. Even though I knew I mustn't sleep with any of the servants, I thought . . . I could see what a wretched job my parents were making of being Master and Mastress of the House of His Master's Kindness. I thought perhaps, if I could convince my parents to sell the house-servants to me, I could do a better job of it. Because . . . I wanted to be a master. Because I wanted to do the job well." 

Jesse's gaze rose to meet Carr's. "But you didn't offer to buy them. Not even today, before your father took their certificates to the Bureau. Why?" 

Carr knelt down next to the binder. Carefully, tenderly, he gathered the dividers together, each divider labelled with the names of his parents' house-servants. He held them in his hands gingerly, barely breathing, staring down at them. 

"Okay," said Jesse, "I am officially the biggest fucking idiot in this entire world. It was right in front of me all along. You want to be a master. You think it's wrong to be a master. You think that, if you become a master, you'll screw up, the way your parents have screwed up. Right?" 

With his head still bowed over the dividers, Carr said, "I'm still in school. I know that eventually I'll have to decide what I must do, but . . . I thought I'd have another tri-year to decide." 

"And in the meantime, you're fucking scared to do anything, for fear of making a bigger mess than your parents have already made." Jesse sighed and ran his hand through his hair as Carr stood up. "And I thought I was the troublemaker. Carruthers, do you _enjoy_ screwing with people's minds? Letting me think you were only wanting to keep your money away from the Abolitionists, when actually you were afraid of harming the servants further?" 

"I'm sorry," Carr said awkwardly. "I wasn't sure how to . . . I've never had anyone to talk to about all this before." 

"Yeah." Jesse squeezed the back of his own neck, as though it hurt. "Yeah, I can see that. And since you weren't sure what to do, doing nothing seemed the safest route. Okay. It all makes sense now." He put his hand on the stack of certificates. "Your call, Carruthers. Say the word, and they're yours. Don't say the word, and I'll take these back to the Bureau. Silence is an answer too, you know." 

The certificates fit neatly in the binder, each separated by a divider. When he was through, Carr stared down at them, thinking of the other documents he would need to place there. Birth certificates. Health certificates. Household records. Copies of the recommendations he would write. Responsibility after responsibility, piling upon him within a very short time. 

Next to him, Jesse said, "You're the quietest master I've ever met. Are you planning to give orders through semaphore? Or are you just going to make the servants guess what you want?" 

Carr snapped the binder-tongs shut. "What about Sally and Bat?" 

"What about them? I was groom's attendant last week, during that big storm we had. Sorry that you weren't invited to the wedding, but Bat and Sally didn't really think you wanted to attend." Jesse scrutinized Carr's face for a minute before saying. "Sorry. That was below the belt. You willing to help them now?" 

Carr nodded, turning away from the binder. "Would they be interested in working here? I mean, I know that my parents won't make things easy for them, but if I'm the one who's hiring them . . ." 

"They can't be hired by anyone else. The Bureau of Employment will revoke their certificates once Sally's pregnancy becomes apparent." 

"I know. And I can't keep them at school with me, when I go back next autumn. Maybe my uncle will be willing to give them positions, even without a certificate. . . ." 

Jesse waved this idea away. "Don't worry about that. Bat has taken to the idea of emigrating. He doesn't just want to go to the First Landstead – he wants to get himself and Sally out of the landsteads altogether. He says he's not letting some kid of his be tattooed with his or her rank, regardless as to what that rank might be. He wants to move to Yclau, where the ranks are more fluid." 

"Can you get him there?" Carr pulled up a stool and perched himself on it as Jesse slid his bottom onto the table. 

"Yeah, with a little trouble. He'll need to go to the First Landstead at the start, like we'd planned; the Yclau are much more inclined to allow First Landsteaders to emigrate to their queendom than any other Landsteaders, since the First Landstead used to belong to them. So we'll smuggle him over the border to the First Landstead, he'll apply to enter Yclau, and then he'll find a new home and a new job. The stores in Yclau's capital are hiring lots of clerks at the moment; it's entry-level work, but Bat will be able to make money enough to live by, and he'll have the opportunity to rise to higher positions." 

"What about Sally?" 

Jesse shrugged. "Yeah, well, she's the problem at the moment. See, she's nearly three months away from having her kid, and so it's not such a great idea for her to be travelling long distances and living in servants' hostels and the like. She and Bat agree that it will be better for the baby she's carrying if she stays in the Dozen Landsteads till Bat is set up in Yclau and can afford to send for her. He should be able to manage that by the end of the summer. And that'll simplify things, because he can apply for her entrance into Yclau on the basis of her being married to an Yclau citizen, namely him." Jesse grinned suddenly. "The Yclau are horrible romantics. All that Bat needs to do is sing them _The Ballad of the High Seeker and His Love-Mate_, and the Yclau officials will be falling over themselves to reunite the parted lovers." 

"Sally can stay here till then," Carr said quickly. As Jesse raised his eyebrows, Carr added, "If she's willing to forgive me." 

Jesse grinned again, more broadly this time. He pulled two pieces of paper out of his jacket and placed them on the table in front of Carr: the certificates of employment for Bat and Sally, with Carr's name marked as their most recent employer. "Bat and I _just_ managed to keep Sally from coming back tonight and grovelling at your feet in humble repentance. . . . Okay, Sally's taken care of. That leaves Bat." He waited, his head tilted to the side. 

Carr pulled from his jacket the check he had written while Jesse was gone. Jesse looked down at it, his mouth quirking. "My, my, a blank check. I haven't gotten a present like this since the first time someone told me that I could do whatever I wanted to him in bed." 

"I have three hundred thousand solidi in the bank. Will that be enough?" 

Jesse snorted. "That's the annual income of some of the smaller nations I've travelled through. One hundred solidi will be enough to get Bat into the First Landstead." 

"Take it. And give Bat whatever he needs to travel and settle himself in Yclau." 

"One thing I'll say about you, Carruthers," Jesse replied as he slipped the check into his trousers pocket. "You don't do things by halves. Either you're doing nothing, or you're throwing solidus bills around willy-nilly. . . . You've given me a blank check. What if some of that money ends up in the pockets of my fledgling organization here?" 

"Take whatever you need to help Bat," Carr said in a steady voice, "and take whatever you need to help anyone else who needs help." 

Jesse flashed him a smile as he reached for his coat. "Don't wait up. This is likely to be another all-nighter." 

o—o—o

It was just short of midnight when Jesse came into Carr's room without knocking and walked over to where Carr was trying – and failing miserably – to keep his eyes focussed on _A Concise History of the Dozen Landsteads_. 

"Here you go," Jesse said, tossing his travelling bag on the floor and throwing the check down onto the bedspread. 

"Didn't you use it?" Carr grabbed the check and looked; it still held his signature and was still blank. 

"The very check you gave me?" Jesse flounced down onto the bed beside him. "Hell, no. You'd be arrested the minute your check cleared. Use this one tomorrow to buy corn flakes or something, and then you can look at the nice policeman with that wide-eyed, innocent schoolboy look you've perfected and can truthfully tell him that somebody must have forged your signature, money was withdrawn from your bank account overnight, as you learned when you went to the bank to check your balance after buying corn flakes. . . ." 

"I thought you didn't have any forgers helping you." Carr moved the check under the lamp and scrutinized it; he could see the faint indentations on it now, where someone had traced his signature. 

"Yeah, well, we don't have anyone talented enough to forge a government document, but somebody who's about my height, and who was wrapped all in a cloak that hid his face, drew cash out of your account this afternoon, using a forged signature and your account number, which is also printed on your check, you might have noticed. The cash will eventually be traced to a certain guard at the border next to the First Landstead, unless he's smart enough to cover his tracks." 

"And the person who's about your height and was wrapped in a cloak?" Carr looked over at Jesse, who had fallen back onto the bed, pillowing the back of his head with his arm. 

"Is taking a trip back over the ocean tomorrow. This latest jaunt was a bit too hot for me, and anyway, I've done half of what I came here for: I've gotten the Dozen Landsteads' Abolitionist movement started and financed—" 

"Financed?" Carr looked back down at his signature. 

"By me." Jesse turned his head to look at Carr. "Just pin money, unless you were serious about that donation to my organization." 

"Yes, I am." Carr set the check aside. "You said that you did half of what you came here for. What was the other half?" 

Jesse shrugged. "A trip to the First Landstead. I told you before: that was my original destination. If I'd gone over the border tonight, though, it would have been too easy for the police to trace where Bat had gone. And anyway, I doubt I could have found a way in to where I needed to go, since you were no help." 

"I was no—?" Carr stopped and looked back at _A Concise History of the Dozen Landsteads_, with its garish cover of Prison City. 

"You _wanted_ me to arrest you," he said softly after a minute. "That day on the ocean steamer – you goaded me into searching your travelling bag, so that I'd find the secret compartment and arrest you, and you could go to Prison City and raise the servants there in rebellion. . . . Jesse, do you even know how to use a gun?" 

"Oh, sure," said Jesse cheerfully. "I'm very good at shooting out locks and waving my gun around in a threatening manner. I'm told I make dainty maidens faint, cause old men to grow pale in the face, etc., etc. . . . You might at least have had the decency to hand me over to the police when I started gallivanting off into Abolitionist business late at night and flaunting the headlines about it at your breakfast table every morning." He turned his head to grin at Carr, who had fallen backwards onto the bed and had his legs doubled up as he strove to control his laughter. "Thank the gods," Jesse added. "I was beginning to wonder whether I could raise more than a wan smile from you. I'm serious, though. I mean, for fuck's sake, here I am, making it as obvious as I can be that I'm a criminal, and you're being all nobly forgiving, your uncle is treating me as a quaint foreigner, your parents are as oblivious as can be, and your servants— Well. Suffice it to say, I've had no problems staffing our new movement. Which is all well and good, but what does a man have to do to get himself locked up?" 

"Abuse of power." Still breathless from his laughter, Carr managed to roll onto his side. 

"Abuse of power?" 

"Unless you bear a servant's mark. Abuse of power is the only crime for which a master can be sent to Prison City. For anything else, you'd be sent to an upper landstead prison." 

"Oh." For the first time, Jesse's face took on a look of chagrin. "Guess I didn't do my homework well enough beforehand. Okay, then . . . thanks for not handing me over to the police." 

"You're welcome." 

There was a space of silence. Carr became suddenly aware – at the same moment that his shaft did – that he was lying only inches from Jesse, who was also lying on the bed. Jesse, who had been staring up at the ceiling, turned his head and said, "So what do you want?" 

"Want?" Carr's voice cracked. 

"Yeah, want. And don't give me any of that shit about 'I did this all for the sake of the deserving poor, and the knowledge of my new servants' good fortune is reward enough.' Masters don't do anything unless they want something in return, even if it's only a kiss from a grateful servant. So what do you want in exchange for the money you gave me?" 

Carr felt heat enter his face. He quickly sat up in the bed. "Nothing." 

"That's the most unconvincing 'nothing' I've heard in a long time. Was it my mention of a financial transaction that scared you off? Okay, let me try this: You scratched my back, now I'll scratch yours. Just tell me how you like to be scratched." 

Carr tried placing his arms around his folded legs and pressing his face against his knees. It didn't help. His cheeks grew cool, but his shaft was still hot. 

"Hey, now, your parents might be morons, but I'm not," Jesse said lazily from where he lay. "I told you before, standing offer. But I also told you: I'm on top." 

"I know." Carr forced himself to raise his head and look Jesse straight in the eye. 

After a bit, Jesse said, "Kid, you're scaring me now. Nobody goes through character change that quick. And I thought I could tag the type of master who likes the servant to do all the work in bed. That doesn't ring true with you." 

"I'm not—" He looked away, took a deep breath, and tried again. "I'm not going to lie to myself any more. I'm not an Egalitarian. The Egalitarians want there to be no masters and servants in the world, and I— I don't want there to be unwilling masters and unwilling servants. Especially not unwilling servants. I want there to be a world where people can choose what to be." 

"Including choosing to be masters and servants?" Jesse's voice was surprisingly mild. "Hell, Carruthers, I'm half a mile ahead of you on that. I've offered slaves the chance to run away, and they've turned me down, because they liked being slaves. Well. To each his own. It's not like I—" 

Carr turned his head quickly. "Not like you what?" 

For a moment, it seemed that Jesse would not respond. Then Jesse gave a small smile. "Oh, hell, you know what I was going to say. It's not like I haven't been tempted to hire servants myself. In fact, I've been offered a position as a slave trainer." 

_"You?"_

Carr's incredulity must have seemed exaggerated, for Jesse raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, me. Not that I'd take the position without a major rehaul in that business's goals. But having someone serve me who wanted to serve me . . . Sure, I could deal with that. —Hey, stop goggling at me. I said I was an Abolitionist. I never said I was an Egalitarian – not in the sense that your parents use the word. It's like you said: Willingness is everything." 

"It's not that." Carr felt dizzy with hope now. "It's just— I knew what I wanted from you, but I wasn't sure you wanted— Or would be able—" 

"Spit it out, for the gods' sake. You want what? For me to top you? So that you can—? Oh, shit." Jesse jerked upright abruptly, causing _A Concise History of the Dozen Landsteads_ to fall to the floor. "You want me to train you? To be a _servant_?" 

"Yes. No. I want you to train me to be a servant . . . so that I can be a master." 

There was a long, long silence, during which Carr tried to decide which crack in the floorboard to melt into. Then Jesse said, in a matter-of-fact voice, "Okay, I get you." 

"Do you?" Carr asked in a faint voice. 

"Sure. You want to be a good master, so you want to take on temporarily the work of a servant to learn what it's like. Your parents had the same idea, you know." 

He felt heat enter his cheeks again. "I didn't intend—" 

"No, scratch that, I didn't mean to put it that way." Jesse waved away his remark. "I meant, that was one of their few good ideas, having you work as a border guard. You learned anything about mastering from taking a service job?" 

"A bit." Carr looked down at the bedspread. "The thing is, though . . . I'm heir to the Second Landstead, and nobody at my workplace ever forgets that. They all treat me with tender regard, as though I'm already High Master." 

"And you want someone who will rough you up a bit." Jesse gave a low chuckle. "Kid, you have _so_ picked the right person to train you. I specialize in roughing up. I don't suppose you've noticed." 

Carr looked over at Jesse and saw he was smiling. Carr gave a shy smile back. "And so . . . ?" 

Jesse's smile disappeared. "Request my help." 

"But I just asked—" 

"Request my help again." Then, in a harder voice: "On your knees."


	12. Chapter 12

**CHAPTER TWELVE**

"Down a bit further. Use your tongue more. Okay, stop. No, I said stop. _Ouch!_ Fucking hell, Carruthers, what kind of shit are you pulling on me?" 

Tears trickled from Carr's eyes, not only from the pain in his scalp as Jesse yanked his head up by his hair, but also from the pain in his throat. He coughed uncontrollably. Above him, Jesse said, "Now, that was just plain stupid, Carruthers. Way to go in turning on your master: begin chewing on his cock." 

"Sorry," Carr managed to choke out. "I didn't mean to—" 

In the next moment, Jesse's right palm boxed his ear. "Wrong. Try again." 

"I was just attempting to get you into my throat, blast it!" Kneeling on the floor as he awkwardly positioned himself over Jesse's outstretched right leg, Carr looked up at the other youth, who was sitting naked on the edge of the bed. 

Jesse just looked back at him. For a long time, till Carr dropped his gaze. 

"Wrong again," said Jesse, in the sort of tired voice Carr supposed the youth might use toward a puppy that had puddled the floor twice in one day. "So damn fucking wrong that you'd get _this_—" 

The slap to his face pushed him off-balance; he only managed to stay upright by clutching Jesse's thigh. New tears sprang forth from his eyes. 

Above him, Jesse continued remorselessly, "—if you were with a nice master who was having a good day." 

"What if I was with a bad master on a bad day?" Carr kept his head bowed, trying to blink back the tears and ignore the searing pain in his cheek. 

"You don't want to hear those sorts of anecdotes from my life – not if you want to keep from vomiting. Let's try it again." 

Carr took a deep breath. Without raising his eyes, he said, "Master, please forgive me for my insolence and for harming you with my teeth." 

"Okay, that'll do. Now stop clutching at my thigh. When you're struck, it's always better to let yourself fall on the ground – that's probably the effect your master is aiming at. You don't want to clutch at him and risk digging your nails into some delicate part of his flesh." 

Carr looked up then. "I wouldn't hit my servant in the face." 

"So? Chances are, by the time you meet him, your servant has been hit in the face dozens of times. I thought you wanted to know what it was like to be the average servant? But okay, we'll say you've picked up some nice virgin, and you're his first master, and his parents and playmates never said an unkind word to him in his life. Got that?" 

Carr nodded. 

"Fine. Now _fucking answer the question I asked you_." 

Carr stared until Jesse raised his hand again. Carr said quickly, "I don't – I don't remember the question. Sir." 

"Which would earn you this—" 

It was a backhanded slap this time. Carr let himself crash against the dresser; then, wincing, he pulled himself back up to his previous position and waited, eyes down, his breath heavy, his bruises throbbing. 

After a minute, Jesse said, "Good. I wasn't sure how high your tolerance for pain was." 

"I'm on the Second House's team at school." He kept his eyes down. 

"Oh, right, I forgot – and from what I've been reading about those games you Landsteader guys play, you've learned everything you need to know about pain tolerance. Except being raped, and we'll skip that lesson." 

Carr looked up then at Jesse, who was smiling down at him. "Are you sure?" Carr asked in a steady voice. "I thought that came next: You forcing your shaft down my throat." 

With a light laugh, Jesse reached forward and stroked the back of his fingers across one of the cheeks he had hit. "Sorry. Hope it doesn't sting too much. Maybe I should have asked first what sort of physical discipline you plan to use on your servant." 

"A lot less than when this lesson started." 

Jesse's smile broadened. "Great. So you're learning something. Did you learn anything else from me hitting you?" 

Carr took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and drained himself of the impulse to strangle Jesse. "Not to forget what questions my master asks me. Will you remind me of what you asked? Sir?" 

"Don't make that 'sir' an afterthought. I asked you what the fuck you were doing back there when you tried to bite my cock off." 

"I told you, I was trying—" 

"You were trying to deep-throat me, yeah. Did I order you to deep-throat me?" 

"No, but—" 

"Did I give you permission to deep-throat me?" 

A pause. "No." Another pause. "I was trying to show initiative." 

"Good move if you have some sense of your master's desires and character; bad move if you don't know yet whether your master is a self-centered bastard who will hit you across the head for trying to do your best. Got it?" 

Carr swallowed. "Yes, sir." 

"Gods, you're easy to teach. I've known slaves who took five years to learn that lesson. So what do you do if you want to show initiative, but you don't want to risk ending up in a coma because your master has a fist like a train engine?" 

Carr ran his tongue over his teeth, hoping that they would remain unsmashed by the end of the night. Then he said, "I ask permission?" 

"You ask permission, right. So you're that hypothetical slave you'll own some day. How do you ask permission to deep-throat your master?" 

Carr thought a minute before saying, "Master, is it your wish that this servant should give you pleasure with my – with his throat?" 

"Hmm." Jesse appeared to consider this request for a minute, staring up toward the ceiling, which was dusky-dark. "Not bad. That would do for the right sort of master." 

Carr sighed with relief, then yelped as Jesse grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. "But not for you," Jesse said in a hard voice as he stared down at Carr. "Come on, Carruthers, don't be a fucking idiot – _think_. This is _your_ servant. He's serving _you_. How do you want him to ask permission to deep-throat you?" He released Carr's hair and waited. 

Carr spent a trio of minutes thinking about his aching scalp, his bruised torso, his burning cheeks, his throbbing ear, and how he would never ever _ever_ raise his hand to his servant in anger – not after this lesson. Finally he lowered his eyes and said, "Master, I hope you don't mind if I say this, but I've never learned how to serve your shaft with my throat. If it would please you to receive that service from me, I'd really like to know how, because it would arouse me to give you pleasure like that. Will you teach me, sir?" 

After a full minute, Carr ventured to look up. Jesse, still staring up at the ceiling, said, "You know, don't you, that those words went straight to my cock?" 

Carr lowered his eyes again, smiling. "Mine too." 

"Yeah, I know." Jesse chuckled as he pressed his toes further against Carr's erection. "You're like a damn truth meter, you know? Every time you give the right answer, you get hard. Trouble is, you're enjoying this training far too much." 

"I want my servant to enjoy being bedded," Carr protested, looking up. 

"Each and every time? At the exact hour and minute you want it?" Jesse snorted as he looked down. "Come on, Carruthers, get real. We're not talking about you holding careful negotiations with your boyfriend to see when he wants to make love with you. We're talking about you fucking your servant. Do you schedule your house-servants' days around their needs? Do you tell your servants to lay the table whenever _they_ feel like it?" 

"My parents do sometimes," Carr replied in a low voice. 

"Yeah, and you've seen how well _that _works. Don't fuck with your servant's mind, Carruthers. Tell him what you want; don't leave him guessing by asking him, 'Do you want this? Do you want that? Are you in the mood for sex?' Because that's just plain _stupid_ – it'll leave your servant trying to second-guess what you want, and you'll end up frustrated as hell and will take it out on him." 

Carr stared down at Jesse's thigh, trying to focus his attention on the coarse hairs near the groin, which gave way to softer hairs. Above him, Jesse sighed and said, "Look, Carruthers, get it through your head: the type of guy you're seeking isn't looking for romance with an equal. He wants to _serve_ you. Even if he doesn't get off physically on having sex with you every single time you want it, he gets off emotionally on the idea of serving you. He _likes_ sucking his master's cock when his own is all shrivelled up. Or so those types of servants have told me." Jesse shrugged as Carr looked up. "I can sort of understand it. Enjoying the sacrifice you make for your beloved. Happens in relationships between equals too – it just isn't as common." 

"You make it sound as though it's better to be a master in a relationship with a servant," Carr said slowly. 

Jesse shrugged again. "Not better – just different. But if you try to make dates with your servant, you'll get the worst of both worlds. So don't. —What were we talking about before?" 

"You were going to show me how to take you into my throat." 

"Oh, right. Well, to start with, you have to understand that sucking is like being fucked: the best way to keep from getting hurt is to relax. . . ." 

o—o—o

Afterwards, with the sweat drying on their skin, and their breaths still heavy, and the smell of sex in the air, they lay side by side on the bed, Carr still on his stomach, his head cradled in his arms, feeling his bottom ache less than he had expected. 

"So how was it?" asked Jesse, staring up at the ceiling. 

"It was . . ." Carr had to pause to think. Educational? Survivable? Not horrible? "Interesting," he finally said. 

Jesse gave a low chuckle. "It's okay, Carruthers; my master-cap is off now. You can say, 'Boring as hell.'" 

"No, really," he protested, which prompted Jesse to laugh louder. "I mean it. I had thought being entered like that would be tedious and painful for the servant. Something he was willing to endure for the sake of service, like washing a floor. But that thing you did toward the end—" 

"The wonders of the prostate," Jesse contributed. "It didn't do much for you, though. You're one hundred percent top." 

"Oh, I don't know," he said, feeling uneasy at being classified so thoroughly. "It's something I might be willing to try again . . . if I thought the servant would enjoy it." 

"Yeah, now, see, that's just disgustingly Egalitarian of you." Jesse continued to stare at the ceiling. 

"No," Carr corrected softly. "That's noblesse oblige." 

Jesse's gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. "Yeah. That's what I meant." 

Carr propped himself up onto his elbows. He did not consider himself to be a person who had any special talent for being able to read the mood of others, which meant that, if he was picking up signals from Jesse, those signals must be as bright as a heliograph from one yard away. "What's wrong?" he asked. "The training's over." 

"Like hell it is." Jesse didn't move his gaze. "It's your turn now." 

In an instant, his shaft, which had deflated during the previous proceedings, inflated like a dirigible. "What?" he said weakly. 

Finally Jesse turned his head; his expression was set. "Don't be a fucking moron, Carruthers. I know you. You're not going to pick some seasoned veteran like Variel; you're going to pick some sweet, innocent kid your own age to serve you in bed. And if you think I'm going to let you fuck a virgin without test-driving first, you're out of your gods-damned mind." 

Carr was silent a while, seeing the strain in Jesse's expression. Then he said, "So I'll find a seasoned veteran to teach me that part." 

"Yeah, well, that's what you've got right here. How do you want me?" As he spoke, Jesse rolled over, pulled open his travelling bag, and began groping in it. 

"Jesse, you don't need to—" 

"Don't be a twit, Carruthers. You're not the first person I've bottomed to, okay? I've even done it with my boyfriend, though he prefers me on top. So just tell me what position you want, so we can get this over with." His hand emerged from the bag. It was holding one of the items of toiletry he had brought with him from overseas: a white tube labelled "lubricating gel." 

"Jesse . . ." 

"Oh, hell, so I'm going to have to hand-feed you?" Jesse unscrewed the tube and squirted the gel onto his palm. "Okay, on my back, legs up on your shoulders. On my back, legs folded, held up by my arms. Over the side of the bed, me kneeling, presenting my ass to be fucked. . . ." 

The recital of choices went on for quite a while. Somewhere along the ways, Carr ended up in a sitting position, with Jesse seated beside him, Jesse's gelled hand sliding up and down Carr's shaft, sending so much heat into Carr's loins that he felt like a steamboat's boiler, ready to explode. 

". . . and then there are the possibilities that come from me hanging from the ceiling, but hey, I don't suppose we want the glass on that chandelier to tinkle and wake your parents, and anyway, I don't like to try that sort of thing without being sure that the chandelier isn't going to come down in the middle of— Are you listening, Carruthers?" 

He made some sort of noise of acknowledgment. Jesse's thumb kept tracing the big vein on Carr's shaft until it reached the top, and then it would brush across the peak, ever so lightly, in a manner that was driving Carr mad. It was the twenty-eighth mode of stroking a shaft that Jesse had shown him. Carr had counted. 

He was reaching the point where he could no longer keep count, much less retain any form of coherent thought. 

". . . Oh, and then there's the possibilities for what one can do in water, that's a whole story in itself, but your bath isn't big enough, and I don't suppose that it's warm enough tonight to use the Bay. . . ." 

He had Jesse flipped over in an instant. Another flick, and he had Jesse on his hands and knees. Carr took longer in positioning Jesse's legs, only because it had occurred to him that he was being peremptory in his maneuvering. "I think we should start now, if you don't mind," he suggested. 

Jesse – head down, bottom up, legs spread so that his shaft and testicles dangled free, was silent a minute before saying, "Teach me that trick some time, will you?" 

"Trick?" said Carr, moving pillows to support Jesse's chest, so that there would be less strain on his arms. "You mean, how I positioned you? That's just a footer move. It's a third-back move, actually, and I'm a forward, but I made sure I learned the third backs' moves too, in case I should—" 

"No, not that." Jesse's voice emerged muffled from the cradle of his arms. "Your voice. Fucking freaky, Carruthers. I mean, most masters I know manage to convey orders by being forceful in tone. They'll shout, or they'll let their voices go deep, or they'll snap out the words, or they'll keep their tone very, very cool. But you . . . Your tone is as bland as porridge, and you're as quiet as a mouse, and you'll say things like 'if you don't mind,' and servants will hear you and _drop_ everything they're doing to serve you at once. You know that, don't you?" 

"Yes." He ran his hand along Jesse's back, feeling the renewed sweat there. 

"Yeah." Jesse's voice grew quieter. "Yeah, I guess you do know." 

They were both silent for a while. Jesse had opened the window a crack, earlier in the night; Carr could smell the fresh moistness of the Bay and could hear the slap of the water against the wharf. Somewhere far away, a loon-bird emitted a mournful cry. 

"You don't have to do this," said Carr. 

Jesse gave a humorless chuckle into his arms. "Don't worry, Carruthers; I'm not going to panic on you. I've done this a million times before." 

"Yes." He ran his hand lightly over Jesse's back again. "This is the first time since then?" 

Another spell of silence; the wind stirred Jesse's hair, bringing into the room the scent of salt and seaweed. Finally Jesse said, "Yeah, almost. There was one time, with the master who gave me my freedom . . . But that was okay, that was rough sex – he let me fight him, and it was a game between us, you know? It wasn't like me having to sit still, just waiting for the master to do whatever he—" Jesse stopped, his face still half-hidden within his arms. Carr could see that he was biting his lip. 

Carr set aside the image that had been building in his mind, of Jesse's first master, demoted to third rank and placed on one of the playing fields of Narrows School, so that Carr could send his team's third backs out to _smash_ that master's face. . . . He erased that image, saying only, "You don't have to do this. I'll leave now, if you want me to. Or you can simply walk out." 

"Yeah," said Jesse. "Yeah, I know. And you know, I lied before." 

"Lied?" Reaching over toward the gel, Carr paused in his motions. 

"About how being a servant here is worse than being a slave. I mean, yeah, it _is_ worse, when you're with hypocrites like your parents, who pretend they don't have any power over their servants and then treat them like slaves. But when you're with someone who knows the power they have over you, and is still willing to let you walk out on them . . . Yeah, it's different being a servant." 

"So what is the difference between letting a servant walk out and being an Egalitarian, do you suppose?" Somewhat tentatively, Carr placed his finger, now covered with gel, against Jesse's hole. 

"For fuck's sake, Carruthers, I'm not a gods-damned virgin," Jesse said harshly. "Just fuck me with your cock, okay?" 

Carr moved the palm of his hand so that it covered the warmth of Jesse's testicles. "No," he said simply. 

After a pause, Jesse gave a weary laugh. "You know you just answered your own question, right?" 

"You're not ready yet." 

"Come on, Carruthers, why don't you make a more obvious statement, like, 'The sky is blue' or 'The grass is green' or 'This guy in bed with me is a fucking coward.'" 

"I was nervous also, when you did it to me." Carr shifted place so that he could reach around and take hold of Jesse's shaft. 

"It's different with me, okay?" Jesse's voice sounded breathless. 

Carr did not bother to move to look at his face. "Yes, I know. And it's different with me, too. I'm not your first master. I'm not your master at all. I'm just someone you're training, and you're in control here. If you say 'Stop,' I stop. I'll stop at any moment, right up to the end." 

Jesse gave another of his humorless chuckles. "Yeah, now, that's the biggest fucking lie you've ever told, but that's okay, because you don't realize it." 

Carr made no immediate reply. Partly it was because he was measuring the pattern of Jesse's breathing, which was beginning to slow. Partly, though, it was because he was reflecting, with surprise, on how easy this was. 

No doubt he was making many mistakes; he was inexperienced and fallible. But he felt none of the inadequacy and helplessness he had experienced when he had tried to live his life as an Egalitarian. He felt like a man who picks up a tool and discovers that, all his life, he has been meant to work at this particular machinery. 

And with that feeling of quiet competency had come another feeling, one that no longer caused his chest to tighten with guilt. 

He moved his body slowly until he was crouching over Jesse's back. "Jesse," he said softly into the other youth's ear, "I don't know whether you're ready yet . . . but I am. Do you think you can stay relaxed?" 

He had his hand on Jesse's wrist; he felt the pulse-beat rise at his words. But after a minute, Jesse said, "Yeah. For you, I can." 

And so he entered, and found himself at home. 

o—o—o

The house-servants were all waiting in the kitchen when Carr arrived the following evening. Sally, ever the eager one, curtsied as he entered; the other servants simply watched him warily. Variel, near the fireplace, scrutinized him with narrowed eyes. 

Carr paused in the doorway, looking round at the crowd, all awaiting his word. He wished badly that Jesse were still here, ready to offer advice if he should founder. But Carr had escorted Jesse to his ocean-bound steamer that afternoon, ignoring Jesse's sardonic smile and the border-guard supervisor's gaping stare when Carr kissed the young man goodbye. 

"You're all set to take my place as chief troublemaker here, aren't you?" Jesse had murmured as he took his travelling bag from Carr's hand. 

"You're a foreigner," Carr had replied under his breath. "The trouble will begin the first time I try something like this with a Landstead servant." 

Jesse had laughed then. "That won't happen till you find the servant who wants you. Goodbye, Master Carr." And with a smile that wasn't quite sardonic, Jesse had parted from Carr, pausing only to whisper into Carr's ear the name of the servant to whom he could give his donation to the Dozen Landsteads' budding Abolitionist movement. 

Now, standing in front of Variel and the other servants, Carr thought to himself that, if this were a shilling-shocker novel, he would proceed to lead the servants in a revolt against the High Masters of the Dozen Landsteads. Instead, he was a journeyman master, hoping that he didn't make too much of a fool of himself in front of his new servants. 

He cleared his throat. "First news first. I've talked to my parents, and they've agreed to let you stay here until you find new employment, with the references I will provide." 

Sally sighed audibly. The rest of the servants exchanged quick glances, as though they were still waiting for the whip to fall. 

It was time to let it fall. Walking forward, Carr said, "We will be holding the Spring Manhood feast tomorrow evening, two days late. My parents have agreed to allow the watermen and their families to attend the festivities as well. I'll provide the money for the food." 

Most of the house-servants gave an approving murmur. Millie, smirking, said in a casual manner, "Thanks, comrade." 

Carr looked at her until all of the servants fell silent, shifting uneasily, and the smirk had drained from Millie's face. Then he said, "I need to make one thing clear. I am not your comrade. I am your master. I own the certificates of your employment. Henceforth, you will obey my orders." 

Everyone in the room was still now. Sally was chewing her knuckles. Millie looked perilously close to rolling her eyes. Variel still gazed narrowly. Cook and Irene simply waited. 

Carr took from his pocket the papers he had labored over during the early hours before dawn, while Jesse slumbered in Carr's bed, still touched in his sleep by a smile at what had taken place overnight. Carr unfolded the papers, carefully smoothed them out, and laid them on the kitchen table. Then he forced himself to look up. 

"These are the rules you will abide by," he said. "I've left you scope enough to make your own decisions pertaining to work that you know better than I do. But these rules provide the general outline for your service in this household. If any of you do not wish to abide by these rules, I will give you your reference now, for your past good service. If you stay until the time you find new employment, I expect you to follow my rules." 

He waited, aware of the silence as he had been aware of it on all the previous occasions when he entered this room. The silence no longer felt empty to him. It felt as though it were simply awaiting his words. 

"If you have questions about these rules, or concerns, you may come to me with them," he said. "I will not punish you for pointing out any errors I have made. But by the same token, I expect your patience and your loyalty to me. I am not perfect; I want you to help me to become a better master . . . and I expect you to show equal diligence in bettering your skills. The circumstances have been against you in the past; they will not be against you in the short time we have left together. And I promise you—" He lifted his eyes to look at Variel, who was beginning to smile. "I promise you, by what I owe to my ancestor Fernao, that I will abide by these rules I have given you. I will be the master you have sought."

**Author's Note:**

> _Master and Servant_ editorial assistants: Yingtai and Joe Noakes.
> 
> _Master and Servant_ technical consultant: Emily. 
> 
> [Publication history](http://duskpeterson.com/cvhep.htm#abolitionist).
> 
> This story was originally published at [duskpeterson.com](http://duskpeterson.com). The story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Copyright © 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019 Dusk Peterson. Permission is granted for fan fiction or fan art inspired by this story. Please credit Dusk Peterson and duskpeterson.com for the original story.


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